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The purpose of this study is to investigate the driving factors for staff cohesiveness in the workplace and how they are related to workplace learning and development opportunities. Two research questions guided the inquiry: (1) What are the driving factors for staff cohesiveness in the workplace? and (2) How does staff cohesiveness influence workplace learning?

This study is based on a phenomenological research design. The data collection involved interviews and focus group discussions with 22 lecturers in two public universities. Thematic analysis was followed to analyse and interpret data.

The findings of this study indicate that staff cohesiveness is greatly influenced by several factors. Firstly, the presence of shared visions and goals plays a significant role in fostering staff cohesion. In addition, the similarity of age and gender among employees, as well as the presence of mutual support and a sense of belongingness, trust and solidarity, managerial support and the nature of the job that requires collective action, all contribute to staff cohesiveness. It is worth noting that previous studies have not reported the influence of age, gender and job characteristics as factors influencing staff cohesiveness.

Employers should not only focus on the knowledge and hard skills of applicants but also on the soft skills which support teamwork and cohesion in the workplace. Managers who want to enhance workplace learning should create opportunities for social gatherings and informal contacts in the workplace to facilitate informal learning in the workplace. Researchers focusing on workplace learning should include tacit learning practices that occur in the workplace as a result of the closeness between teammates.

This manuscript, which the authors hereby present, is the result of own original work. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors wish to emphasise that it has not been submitted for publication in any other journals.

This study's main goal is to expand the theoretical perspective and discuss the unique influence of age and tenure on R&D teams' incremental innovation outcomes. We answer scholars call for additional research on age-related processes by testing pathways through which older employees can benefit organizational performance. The current study advances the literature by relating to the context-related process of cohesion and investigating its moderating influence on the relationship between team antecedents (i.e. age and tenure) and incremental innovation.

This research sample consists of 108 R&D teams operating in six mature high-tech organizations located in Israel. The participating entities design and manufacture state-of-the-art innovations in the semiconductors, communications and information technology sectors. The number of teams in each participating entity was 35, 21, 21, 19, 7 and 5, respectively. The sample consisted of 443 R&D employees and 212 team leaders/managers. The total sample comprised 655 participants. Team members filled out questionnaires to assess the independent variables. The dependent-variable questionnaire focusing on the team's incremental innovation accomplishments was completed by two managers for each team.

We found a negative association between team members' age and incremental innovation. Hypothesis 2, which predicted a positive association between team members' tenure and incremental innovation, was marginally supported. The interaction between team members' age and team members' tenure on incremental innovation was marginally supported. Hypothesis 4, which predicted that the negative association between team members' age and incremental innovation would be mitigated when the level of team cohesion is low, was supported. Hypothesis 5, which assumed that the positive association between team members' tenure and incremental innovation would be stronger when the level of cohesion is high, was supported.

This research's results regarding the negative influence of R&D employees' age on incremental innovation are crucial for managers and team leaders in the high-tech industry. Following the age stereotype, many of them avoid recruiting and assigning older employees to R&D teams dealing in innovation creation and development. They should expand their perspective and consider additional attributes in order to assign the employees that best match the team's mission. The results show that R&D teams produce high and similar levels of incremental innovation when the level of team members' tenure is high, regardless of their age.

This study benefited from a relatively high number of respondents and teams from leading high-tech organizations, a high response rate and a research design that made it possible to establish a linkage between data on the independent variables and data on incremental innovation collected from separate independent sources. The data on the dependent variable—incremental innovation—was based on independent assessments made by two managers for each team. The study's measurements were based on leading studies on innovation.

To date, little research has been undertaken to test the effectiveness of team coaching, with past work focusing on models, frameworks and competencies. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of team coaching within real world organizational teams and its impact on individual perceptions of team cohesion and psychological safety.

A randomized control trial (RCT) using the comparable interventions: (1) team coaching (intervention) and (2) team facilitation (control) was employed with multiple teams and multiple facilitators, measuring the impact on team cohesion and psychological safety.

The data indicate participants engaging in the team coaching intervention made greater gains in terms of their individual perceptions of psychological safety and team cohesion than individuals who received the team facilitation intervention (T1–T2).

Facilitators should apply a team coaching approach when seeking to address issues of cohesion and psychological safety within workplace teams.

This study provides the first evidence, using an RCT method, of the effectiveness of team coaching as a workplace intervention for enhancing individual perceptions of psychological safety and team cohesion.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, ubiquitous social media has become a primary channel for information dissemination, social interactions and recreational activities. However, it remains unclear how social media usage influences nonpharmaceutical preventive behavior of individuals in response to the pandemic. This paper aims to explore the impacts of social media on COVID-19 preventive behaviors based on the theoretical lens of empowerment.

In this paper, survey data has been collected from 739 social media users in China to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis.

The results indicate that social media empowers individuals in terms of knowledge seeking, knowledge sharing, socializing and entertainment to promote preventive behaviors at the individual level by increasing each person's perception of collective efficacy and social cohesion. Meanwhile, social cohesion negatively impacts the relationship between collective efficacy and individual preventive behavior.

This study provides insights regarding the role of social media in crisis response and examines the role of collective beliefs in the influencing mechanism of social media. The results presented herein can be used to guide government agencies seeking to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

Online/Digital cultural heritage platforms have the potential to serve as empowering sites and tools for democratic participation, and for promoting social cohesion, acting as convergence points for diverse societal groups. They enable the gathering of multiple voices, including those of minorities and groups often marginalised in mainstream cultural heritage documentation. This research paper examines the ways in which these aspirations of cultural heritage platforms as meeting, learning and dialogic spaces for connecting and empowering online communities have been realised.

Using a qualitative design, interviews were conducted with users of New Zealand’s Auckland War Memorial Museum’s Online Cenotaph. Participants shared their experiences with the platform, perceptions of it as a collective social history resource and views on its role as a participatory space for online communities. They also discussed their expectations for its development as an online space for collective memorialisation.

Interviews revealed that users value Online Cenotaph for placing personal, publicly contributed memories and narratives alongside primary military sources. Participants expressed feelings of civic responsibility, social awareness and a sense of identity and connection through their use and contribution to this online commemorative space. The shift from a one-way flow of information from the Museum towards embracing public contribution embodying a high-trust approach, was a notable finding.

This research underscores the evolving role of museums and other GLAM institutions in recognising the importance of inclusivity, diversity and community participation. It provides insights into how digital cultural heritage social platforms can contribute towards these goals and promote social cohesion. This research is also a starting point for further studies on crowdsourcing and social Web activities on digital cultural heritage platforms as sites of community building through public participation and engagement in historical/cultural heritage narratives.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the R&D investment (RDI) of manufacturing firms from the perspective of supply chain network, especially the effect of firms' supply chain network structures (network power and network cohesion) on its RDI, and further to explore the contingency conditions of this effect within the context of Chinese manufacturing supply chains.

The authors collect a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms over the period 2014–2019 and construct a large-scale supply chain network, and finally obtain 2,390 firms from 20,483 observations. Ordinary least squares regression was adopted to analyse how supply chain network structures affect RDI in manufacturing firms.

It is surprising that firm's supply chain network structures have a negative effect on RDI. In addition, knowledge and technology intensity (KTI) positively moderate the relationship between network cohesion and RDI.

This study contributes to the innovation stream from the perspectives of supply chain network, and provides the empirical findings that the negative role of a firm's supply chain network structure on its RDI for the first time. The rationale for these negative effects is straightforward according to the social capital theory that manufacturing firms with a high level of social capital that are possibly to accept established patterns of thinking and behaviour, causing them to decrease the enthusiasm of RDI.

The mental healthcare is experiencing an ever-growing surge in understanding the consumer (e.g., patient) engagement paradox, aiming to vouch for the quality of care. Despite this surge, scant attention has been given in academia to conceptualize and empirically investigate this particular aspect. Thus, drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm, the study explores how patients engage with healthcare service providers and how they perceive the quality of the healthcare services.

Data were collected from 279 respondents, and the derived conceptual model was tested by using Smart PLS 3.2.7 and PROCESS. To complement the findings of partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM), the present study also applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions to explore substitute conjunctive paths that emerge.

Findings show that patients’ perceived intimacy (PI), cohesion and privacy enhance the quality of mental healthcare service providers. The results also suggest that patients’ PI, cohesion and privacy have indirect effects on the perceived quality of care (PQC) by the service providers through consumer engagement. The fsQCA results derive that the relationship among conditions leading to patients’ perception of the quality of care in regard to mental healthcare service providers is complex and is best reflected as multiple and conjectural causation configurations.

The findings from this research contribute to the advancement of studies on patients’ experiences by empirically examining the unique dynamics of interaction between consumers (patients) and mental healthcare service providers, thereby enriching both the literature on social interactions and the understanding of the consumer–provider relationship.

The results of this study provide practical implications for mental healthcare service providers on how to combine the study variables to enhance the quality of care and satisfy more patients.

A significant research gap has ascertained the inter-relationship between PI, cohesion, privacy, engagement and PQC from the perspective of mental healthcare service providers. This research is one of the primary studies from a managerial and methodological standpoint. The study contributes by combining symmetric and asymmetric statistical tools in service marketing and healthcare research. Furthermore, the application of fsQCA helps to understand the interactions that might not be immediately obvious through traditional symmetric methods.

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.

A study of Indian working professionals showed GenY and GenZ cohorts differed significantly in their approaches to core self-evaluations (CSE), team cohesion and organisational culture, but no significant difference was found in team performance. Meanwhile, the study also showed that CSE, team cohesion and organisational culture had a positive effect on team performance

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists 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.

Despite their pivotal role in classroom social dynamics, teachers are not always aware of, and/or do not know how to respond to, bottlenecks in these dynamics. This study investigated the effectiveness of the Social Classroom Dynamics Intervention with Lesson Study (SKILS, acronym of the Dutch program name) in supporting teachers with regards to improving their classrooms' social dynamics.

A sample of Dutch secondary school classrooms was divided into five SKILS classrooms (n = 86; 53.5% boys; M_age-T0 = 13.62 years and SD = 1.02 years) and nine control classrooms (n = 156; 50.6% boys; M_age-T0 = 13.55 years and SD = 0.89 years). Involvement in bullying and social cohesion was assessed pre- and post-intervention using student peer reports. Teachers of SKILS classrooms formed SKILS teams of five teachers (N = 25; 60% male; M_age-T0 = 42.45 years and SD = 12.81 years; teacher's experience: M_T0 = 11.35 years and SD = 8.36 years). Teachers were interviewed post-intervention.

While SKILS had little effect on classroom bullying dynamics, it had a positive effect on student social cohesion. Teachers indicated a learning effect with regard to identifying bottlenecks within classroom dynamics and felt more competent to intervene in response to bottlenecks due to SKILS.

The findings suggest that teachers can successfully impact classroom social cohesion by increasing their knowledge of classroom dynamics and working in Lesson Study (LS) teams with colleagues to develop tailored interventions for these dynamics.