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This chapter is dedicated to the exploration of attitudes toward family planning within marginalized communities in Bangladesh. It begins by elucidating the concept of attitudes and underscoring their significance in the context of family planning. This chapter investigates the intricate relationship between attitudes and family planning decisions, revealing the diverse attitudes prevalent within these marginalized communities. It proposes targeted interventions aimed at breaking down attitudinal barriers that hinder effective family planning practices, with the goal of empowering these communities through a transformative process of attitude change. This comprehensive examination of attitudes toward family planning among marginalized populations contributes valuable insights to the fields of public health and social development.

Tactical capacity planning is crucial when hospitals must cope with substantial changes in patient requirements, as recently experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, there is only little understanding of the nature of capacity limitations in a hospital, which is essential for effective tactical capacity planning.

We report a detailed analysis of capacity limitations at a Norwegian tertiary public hospital and conducted 22 in-depth interviews. The informants participated in capacity planning and decision-making during the Covid-19 pandemic. Data are clustered into categories of capacity limitations and a correspondence analysis provides additional insights.

Personnel and information were the most mentioned types of capacity limitations, and middle management and organizational functions providing specialized treatment felt most exposed to capacity limitations. Further analysis reveals that capacity limitations are dynamic and vary across hierarchical levels and organizational functions.

Future research on tactical capacity planning should take interdisciplinary patient pathways better into account as capacity limitations are dynamic and systematically different for organizational functions and hierarchical levels.

We argue that our study possesses common characteristics of tertiary public hospitals, including professional silos and fragmentation of responsibilities along patient pathways. Therefore, we recommend operations managers in hospitals to focus more on intra-organizational information flows to increase the agility of their organization.

Our detailed capacity limitation analysis at a tertiary public hospital in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic provides novel insights into the nature of capacity limitations, which may enhance tactical capacity planning.

The paper examines the influence of procurement capabilities (skills) and procurement planning on project success in Ghana. The paper further examines the mediating role of procurement planning.

Drawing insights from human capital theory, a model of four hypotheses was developed and validated. The proposed model was validated using survey data from 200 procurement and construction professionals at construction firms in Ghana. The data gathered was analysed using structural equation modelling. Confirmatory factor analysis using Amos software was conducted to establish reliability and validity of the constructs. Hayes process was employed to test the structural model.

Our study revealed that procurement capabilities and procurement planning directly improve project success in the construction sector in Ghana. We found procurement planning acts as a pathway for achieving greater success in construction projects.

This study is among the very few attempts to demonstrate how project success could be enhanced through developing procurement capabilities for effective procurement planning. Theoretically, this study is among the first attempts to theorise the effect of procurement capabilities and planning on project success from the human capital perspective. Our findings also offer practical insight to practitioners in the construction setting by emphasising the need to pay crucial attention to capabilities and planning in the quest to enhance project success in the construction setting. The findings indicate that building capabilities alone is not enough; rather, the ability to deploy such capabilities for effective procurement planning is necessary for driving project success.

This paper comprehensively investigates the lack of youth involvement in the intricate tapestry of urban policymaking in the Jordanian context. It attempts to present and illustrate the obstacles, challenges, hindrances and complexities facing engaging youth in urban planning in Jordan. Participants aged 18–24 were the primary focus of the investigation, as Jordan's population is predominantly youthful, with approximately 70% of the population under the age of 30.

The research methodology adopted in this study is a mixed-methods approach, which integrates both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analytical techniques to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the research problem.

Youth involvement in Jordan's urban policymaking is limited and inconsistent. Most notably, the prevalence of adultism emerges as the predominant and most substantive impediment, exerting a considerable influence on constraining the agency of young Jordanians in shaping urban policy.

Detailed examples can be developed to offer discerning elucidations relevant to each frame of reference.

A total of 12 discernible barriers emerged from a systematic deductive thematic analysis of primary data.

This comprehensive inquiry highlights the pervasive gaps in support for youth participation in urban policymaking within the administrative framework and across Jordanian society. Subsequent quantitative analysis was employed to strengthen the external validity of the research findings, thereby enhancing the generalizability of the qualitative insights. By employing Jordan as a case study, this paper significantly contributes to the expanding corpus of scholarly work on planning processes and practices within the Global South and the Arab world.

Research and Development (R&D) plays a significant role in promoting social and economic development in cities. In urban planning practice, a lack of evidence-informed policies and misguided research efforts can undermine national and local development efforts. This research aims to outline the state of academic research in urban planning and propose a tentative urban planning research agenda in Jordan. Specifically, the study identifies emerging research areas within postgraduate urban planning research in Jordan, examines the extent to which current research activities align with national research priorities, and determines research areas of top priority for Jordanian cities.

The research employs a mixed-method approach using content analysis to analyze academic urban planning research in Jordan and the Delphi method targeting Jordanian urban planning experts to identify research areas that should be prioritized in Jordan within the next five years.

The findings indicate that while urban design and housing, neighborhoods, and community development were the dominant fields of study in postgraduate urban planning research, planning experts identified transportation and land use planning as research areas of top priority for the next five years. The results also suggest that national research priorities lack specificity and offer little guidance for researchers in complex and multifaceted scientific disciplines, such as urban planning.

This research lays the foundations for developing a comprehensive and feasible urban planning research agenda that is responsive to the diverse needs of communities and cities across Jordan. It offers three propositions to guide future knowledge production in urban planning: emphasizing research activity in priority areas, decentralizing research activities, and fostering inter/transdisciplinary research linkages. To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is the first to propose an urban planning research agenda in Jordan.

As consumer debt can substantially impair subjective well-being, it is crucial for research to gain insights into how consumers can be motivated to improve financial planning. This paper aims to investigate how frontline employees in financial services can help consumers regulate their financial planning behaviors and how financial service providers can effectively support their frontline employees in this effort through leadership and organizational climate.

We incorporate regulatory focus theory and conservation of resource theory to develop a conceptual model that we test in a triadic study with a unique dataset collected from consumers, frontline employees, and managers in the banking sector.

We find that frontline employees must pay attention to the details of consumers’ needs and customize the service to those needs to trigger consumer promotion focus and stimulate consumers’ financial planning behaviors. Moreover, our results emphasize that the organization must act as an integrated entity. Thus, a manager’s servant leadership and an organizational climate of customer stewardship are crucial for frontline employees to transform consumers’ financial planning behaviors.

The study highlights frontline employees’ key role in motivating consumer financial planning behavior, offering a new perspective in transformative service research on enhancing financial well-being.

The findings provide financial service providers with actionable implications for enhancing consumers’ financial planning. This benefits both consumers and financial institutions, as customers with greater spending power can buy more financial products.

This study advances transformative service research on consumer financial planning behavior, which has largely focused on consumer-related or society-level variables, by exploring the role of frontline employees and organizational support in terms of leadership and climate.

This paper analyzes and illustrates the spatial distribution of publications in international urban planning journals from 2010 to 2020.

The study employs the Biblioshiny bibliometrix package in R to analyze 44,123 articles from 95 international planning journals. To conduct the spatial scientometric analysis, we adopted the United Nations’ geoscheme focusing on three geographical scales: country, subregion, and region. Collaboration patterns at the country and subregional levels were examined using the VOSviewer tool.

The study found evidence of a spatial polarization of urban planning scholarly knowledge production. Scholars based in the United States and the United Kingdom consistently published at higher rates than any other country in our data set. The region producing the largest number of publications was Europe, consisting of 39.92% of the total publication count. However, urban planning scholars from the Global South authored only 20.96% of planning publications from 2010–2020. Centralization of planning research is also evident within each region and subregion. As such, both the Global North and the Global South should not be framed as homogenous entities and spatial patterns of knowledge production should not be generalized. The analysis also established the emerging role of Northern America as a major collaborator in inter-country and inter-subregional research collaborations. Co-authorship patterns indicate low intra-regional collaboration in planning research, except for Europe.

This article argues that a culture of exclusivity may be occurring in urban planning publication production. By highlighting the spatial disparities in knowledge production, we emphasize the need to examine the structural and institutional barriers that exclude urban planning knowledge emerging from the peripheries in international planning journals.

As competitive pressures persist and global economic influences continue to present new challenges, businesses need to be able to respond to emerging circumstances. Goal-setting and planning are key mechanisms contributing to organizational competitive success, yet organizations underappreciate the role of competency and capacity building factors that contribute to successful planning. This paper integrates three theoretical models enabling an investigation into the positive relationships between managerial activities generating information feedback, training in planning and skills and organizational performance outcomes, while exploring the positive mediating roles of goal-setting and planning.

A unique organizational sample of agribusiness producers (n = 499) in Canada is examined. A structural equation path analysis model is used to evaluate the main relationships.

The results suggest that organizations are finding that managerial and training activities should not be considered in isolation, but rather as supports for goal-setting, planning and performance outcomes. Thus, the implications are that managers can find organizational value enhanced through the building of human resource competency (e.g. management activities and training) with these emerging capacities aiding goal setting and planning activities.

This study makes three main contributions: first, by adopting a rational-design perspective and integrating theoretical frameworks focusing on (a) planning-performance and (b) goal-setting-planning. This extended model goes beyond previous studies by including managerial activities, training, goals, planning and performance outcomes. Second, this study uniquely accounts for a more comprehensive set of key confounding factors such as operational activities, organizational strategy and organizational size in the integrated framework. Finally, as far as the authors are aware, there has not been a survey study at the organizational level that has explored the role of managerial activities and training in planning within a similarly comprehensive model.

This trigger article explores established European gender-mainstreaming urban planning frameworks of urban parks to analyze and identify ways that could be applied or adapted for Arabian Gulf cities. It aims to accelerate the mainstreaming process, increasing women’s participation and inclusion in urban spaces, paving the way for future research.

Analytical frameworks are created by reviewing legal and policy evolution, city-issued guidelines and European cities’ case studies (Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and Vienna) engaged in gender mainstreaming in urban planning. These analytical tools are then applied to assess two Arabian Gulf parks (Al Azaiba Wadi Park, Muscat, Oman, and Dahl Al-Hamam Park, Doha, Qatar), suggesting a possible future research methodology.

Success factors in European cities include integrating female perspectives, detailed user analysis, specific planning solutions and political will. Despite differing social and cultural contexts, commonalities exist for female park users in Europe and the Arabian Gulf. This trigger article proposes a methodology for assessing the potential effective application or adaptation of European established frameworks in the Gulf context to accelerate gender mainstreaming.

The paper proposes a methodology for future research, noting limitations such as limited input on design preparation processes in Gulf City park case studies, a lack of feedback from park users and only a brief overview of sociocultural differences. Future research should explore nuanced cultural contexts, including historical processes and gender dynamics, thorough literature review, expanded case study analysis and participatory approaches. The proposed methodology aims to demonstrate how European frameworks can guide gender-mainstreaming efforts in diverse contexts, facilitating collaborative solutions for inclusive urban planning.

Drawing from decades of European gender-mainstreaming activities, the paper distills urban planning principles and best practices for application or adaptation in the Arab Gulf.

Enhancing the park experience for women through planning and design boosts gender equality in cities, benefiting their physical and social well-being.

An original methodology is suggested for adapting well-developed European gender-mainstreaming frameworks to Arabian Gulf parks. Authored by a male, this paper aims to advance gender issues in planning while exploring the role men can play in contributing to such.

The main purpose of this study was to explore how engaging in lesson study enhances secondary school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical practice in lesson planning in Jimma, Ethiopia.

The study employed a design-based research approach with qualitative and quantitative data collected from two secondary schools, and 12 mathematics teachers. A purposive sampling technique was used to select participants. Interviews, observations, questionnaires and document analysis were the main sources of data. Qualitative data were analyzed using themes with the support of Atlas-ti qualitative data analysis software. Quantitative data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon ranked signs test.

The findings revealed that engaging secondary school mathematics teachers in lesson study enhanced their lesson planning competence. As a result, teachers began to carefully plan detailed lessons, use curriculum materials and create more student-oriented lessons. Lesson study was found to be a potent model on which to build secondary school mathematics teachers’ lesson planning competence. Hence, it would be rewarding to integrate lesson study into the present school-based teachers’ pedagogical capacity-building program in the study settings.

The data were collected from particular localities with a small sample size in the quantitative phase. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize to the entire secondary school teachers in the country. However, thick descriptions were provided that would allow readers to determine the transferability of the findings to their specific school context. Future research should investigate the effects that enhanced TPP in lesson planning has on teachers’ mathematics teaching in more schools using a larger sample size.

This study provides insight into and empirical evidence of how engaging in the process of LS is essential to enhance teachers’ lesson planning competence. It adds important knowledge to a small but growing model of lesson study research. It also informs future researchers in the practical use of LS where lesson planning is a crucial concern in many secondary schools of the country.

This research was originally conducted to build mathematics teachers' pedagogical practice in lesson planning through lesson study in Ethiopian secondary school contexts.