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The United Nations member countries adopted a set of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. It encourages the use of sustainable practices during new product development (NPD). Competitiveness has put pressure on organizations to maintain their market share and look for new approaches related to NPD. The current study aims to focus on creating a framework that can help to achieve the SDGs by adopting agile new product development (ANPD) practices and Industry 4.0 technologies.

From the literature, various ANPD practices, Industry 4.0 technologies, performance metrics, their interconnection and their contribution toward achieving SDGs are extracted. The weights of selected Industry 4.0–ANPD practices are computed by robust best worst method (RBWM), and the Fuzzy-VIKOR method is used to rank the selected performance metrics. To test the robustness of the developed framework, sensitivity analysis is also performed.

The results show that among the various Industry 4.0–ANPD practices “Multi-skilled employees” have the highest weight followed by “Customer requirement analysis and prioritization.” Whereas for performance metrics, “The number of innovative products launched per year” is ranked first, with the “Average time between two launches” at second place.

This research contributes to the adoption of ANPD practices and Industry 4.0 technologies for the achievement of the business SDGs. The shortlisted Industry 4.0–ANPD practices will help in resolving the social and environmental issues. The set of performance metrics will help practitioners and managers to evaluate the performance of ANPD in the context of business SDGs.

This study adds to the understanding related to Industry 4.0–ANPD practices adoption. And to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is believed that no similar work has been done previously and by using industry insights into technology components, this work contributes to valuable insights into the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of the learning and development of 70 external mentors during the first year of their deployment to support early career teachers’ professional learning as part of a national initiative aimed at school improvement in Wales.

The study adopted a narrative methodology that elicited accounts of external mentors’ learning experiences that were captured as textual data and analysed using an inductive approach to identify: first, the manifest themes that appeared at declarative level, and second, the latent (sub-textual) themes of external mentor learning and development.

Four key themes emerged that indicate the complexity of transition to the role of external mentor in high-stakes contexts. From these, eight theoretically-informed principles were derived which support mentors to embrace uncertainty as essential to their learning and development, and to harness the potential they bring as boundary-crossers to support the development of new teachers.

The study investigated the first year of a three-year programme and worked with one form of qualitative data collection. The research results may lack generalisability and a longitudinal study is necessary to further explore the validity of the findings.

The eight principles provide a foundation for mentor development programmes that can support ambitious goals for mentoring early career teachers.

The study addresses the under-researched area of the learning and development of external mentors at a national scale.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between leadership development practices and the following employee attitudes: affective commitment, commitment to acceptance of increasing performance demands and commitment to building competencies. Building on social exchange theory, the study seeks to reveal whether affective commitment mediates the relationship between leadership development practices and both commitment to acceptance of increasing performance demands and commitment to building competencies.

Structural equation modelling was utilized to analyse survey data representing a sample of 332 high-potential employees in eight Nordic multinational corporations.

The study findings show that by means of affective commitment, organizations can expect an induced commitment to acceptance of increasing performance demands as well as an induced commitment to building relevant competencies among employees who engage in leadership development practices.

Given the cross-sectional nature of the study, future research is encouraged to look into how the relationship between leadership development practices and employee attitudes evolves over time.

The study provides insights into the underlying processes by which leadership development practices become reflected in desired employee attitudes. It offers a useful point for future efforts to explore the impact of human resource management (HRM) on employees and organizations through various mediators with the purpose of establishing the current trends within HRM and avoiding tensions in future.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of Phase 1 of the research and to identify Australian agile software development organizations having such coexistence of agile and software configuration management (SCM) practices. This study employed “organization size” variable to study the phenomenon and used theory of Lean Thinking as a lens to analyse implementation variations of agile and SCM practices.

For this study, the research design was comprised of three phases. In Phase 1, a quantitative study using an online survey was performed to answer RQ using various statistical techniques. In Phase 2, an initial conceptual model based on a literature review was developed, and then a qualitative study was performed using one longitudinal case study. In Phase 3, another online survey was performed using various parametric statistical techniques to validate and generalize the findings of Phase 1 and 2 and the proposed SLAM traceability model. The scope of this paper is to discuss only Phase 1 and its associated findings.

The results of the analysis indicated that organizations, regardless of their size, frequently use agile practices for their software development operations. On the other hand, larger organizations use SCM practices comparatively more than medium and small organizations. However, traces of customized SCM process were found in most of the respondent (large, medium, and small) organizations, which indicates the coexistence of agile and SCM practices.

As there is no known listing or database available for such specialized criteria, a non-probabilistic sampling method was used, in the sense that the selection of members of the sample was arbitrary and subjective instead of a non-random selection from the pool of all agile practitioners in the field.

By using the quantitative method approach, this study aims to generate empirical evidence to contribute to the body of knowledge in the relevant areas. On the practical side, this research can also provide support to IT businesses in general, and software development organizations in particular, with the streamlining of the internal operational environment for the facilitation of an adaptable process and the resulting coexistence of value-added agile and SCM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of accounting practices and new technologies in the age of agility as a form of intellectual capital, through sharing the conceptualization and real implications of accounting and accountability ideas in exploring and deploying new technologies, such as big data analytics, blockchain and augmented accounting practices and expounding how they constitute new forms of intellectual capital to support value creation and realise Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The adopted methodology is cyber-ethnography, which investigates online practices through observation and discourse analysis, reflecting on new business models and practices, and how accounting relates to these developments. The global brain sets the conceptual context, which reflects the distributed network intelligence that is created through the internet.

The main findings focus on various developments of accounting practice that reflect, utilise or support digital companies and new technologies, including augmentation, big data analytics and blockchain technology, as new forms of intellectual capital, that is knowledge and skills within organisations, that have the potential to support value creation and realise SDGs. These relate to and originate from the global brain, which constitutes the umbrella of tech-related intellectual capital.

This paper determines new developments in accounting practices in relation to new technologies, due to the continuous expansion and influence of the intelligence of the collective network, the global brain, as forms of intellectual capital, contributing to value creation, sustainable development and the realisation of SDGs.

The main purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic review of the literature on best practices and propose a series of steps or practices that practitioners can use in developing and assessing their leadership development strategies and programs.

This is a review paper. An extensive literature review was conducted (by searching texts and business databases, such as ABIInform/Proquest, for “leadership development best practices”). Once an organization was identified, several criteria were used to decide whether it would be included in this study: independent analysts classified the practice as “best” in the leadership development area; leaders were “made” through integrated, multi‐mode programs that included top management support, systematic training, etc.

Six key factors were found to be vital for effective leadership development: a thorough needs assessment, the selection of a suitable audience, the design of an appropriate infrastructure to support the initiative, the design and implementation of an entire learning system, an evaluation system, and corresponding actions to reward success and improve on deficiencies.

The paper identified “best practice organizations” by reviewing the literature. While this is an acceptable method, it resulted in wide range of determining criteria.

The most important implication of this paper is practical in nature. Essentially, organizations can use the six stages identified in the paper to help them develop and implement effective leadership development strategies.

Leadership development has become a key strategic issue for contemporary organizations. There is considerable evidence to suggest that organizations that do not have properly structured leadership development processes compete in the marketplace at their own peril. Several organizations have reported successes with particular approaches, yet an examination of the literature reveals that the lessons emanating from these success stories are generally not presented in a holistic manner. This is the need that we address in this paper.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

The purpose of this paper is to touch upon the unaddressed points regarding the practice of lesson study (LS) in the field of language teacher development in a Turkish education context by considering the challenges faced and observed by the EFL teachers, their suggestions to design a process like LS practice and benefits that LS practice could provide them in terms of teaching and professional development.

The analysis is based on the data from five EFL teachers’ collaborative work in an arrangement of lesson and learning study and from the researcher’s observations during meetings and discussions throughout the process. The data consist of interviews with participant teachers (pre and post), video recordings of the teacher workshops, field notes of the researcher and video recordings of the research lessons. The analysis was carried out through content analysis beginning with listing the responses of participants, identifying the frequency of citations, collecting similar responses under a common category to determine the categories and at last placing codes into the related categories.

The results show that the teachers had some concerns about LS practice both before and after practicing the model in the study context. They stated their concerns mostly about time, increasing responsibility and effort, being a demanding process. However, the practice seemed to meet their expectations, lead to improvements in knowledge, teaching practices and perspectives, contribute to the personal and professional development of teachers and triggered enthusiasm and a desire for students to participate actively in learning process.

This paper serves as an explicit example of LS practice with its plus and minuses in a Turkish education context as teachers’ views and the researcher’s personal reflections in the current study can guide the process of change and provide evidence and practical suggestions on the feasibility of the program for the ones attempting to experience it. Besides, the teachers’ perceptions and suggestions regarding LS practice in the present study can enable other teachers, organizers of professional development programs and the researchers an opportunity to lead future practices.

This paper presents a conceptual model of effective subcontractor development practices to guide general contractors' development of a network of high-performing subcontractors (SCs) for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects.

Drawing from supplier development theories and practices in the manufacturing sector, a mixed interpretivist and empirical methodology is adopted to examine the body of knowledge within literature for conceptual model development. A self-reporting survey questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale is used to assess 30 construction professionals' perceptions of the effectiveness of 37 SC development practices classified into five categories. Descriptive statistics, weighted means, and t-tests are used for data analysis.

SC prequalification, commitment, incentives, evaluation and feedback practices can be effective in generating high-performing SCs. Practices that require more direct involvement and linkages between GC and SC are perceived to be less effective.

Theoretical contributions include a framework to foster future research to advance knowledge and understanding to enhance the adoption of SC development practices in the construction sector.

Implementation of ranked SC development practices can equip GCs with a network of high-performing SCs for improved competitive advantage and revenues.

The proposed conceptual model expands discussions on the modification of supplier development theories and practices currently utilized in the manufacturing sector toward their application in the construction sector. This research differs from previous research, which primarily focused on the manufacturing sector.

From a more general point of view the initiatives and novel practices of farmers represent ‘seeds of transition’. They are the ‘sprouts’ out of which new socio-technical modes for organizing production and marketing emerge – ‘sprouts’ that, taken together can be described under the term ‘rural development’. The examples are, on the whole, well-known; they include agro-ecological production, on-farm processing, agro-tourism, new credit associations and cooperative forms of commercialization. But it remains important to develop a more sociological interpretation of these new forms: since they are produced by social actors and are constantly redefined and modified through the relations and interactions implied by these new forms. This chapter defines the outline on actors and practices that will be discussed in later chapters of the book.