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Innovation is widely desired within healthcare organizations, yet the efficacy of programs aimed at fostering it remain largely unassessed, with little consideration given to their effects on employee experience. The Veterans Health Administration (VA) innovators network (iNET) was established to provide organizational support to improve and reimagine patient care and processes across the VA. We evaluated participant perspectives on how iNET impacted workplace experience and fostered innovation.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted using purposive sampling to maximize diversity for program roles and site characteristics, reviewed using a rapid matrixed approach, then analyzed using a hybrid inductive/deductive approach that applied a theoretical framework of innovation supportive domains.

21 project investees, 16 innovation specialists and 13 leadership champions participated from 15 sites nationally. Most participants reported strongly positive impacts including feeling re-energized, appreciating new experiences and expanded opportunities for connecting with others, sense of renewed purpose, better relationships with leadership and personal recognition. Negative experiences included time constraints and logistical challenges. Participants’ experiences mapped frequently onto theorized domains of supporting a curious culture, creating idea pathways and porous boundaries, fostering/supporting catalytic leadership and supporting (role) diverse teams. The program’s delivery of ready resources was critically supportive though at times frustrating.

Participants’ experiences support the conclusion that iNET fosters innovation and positively impacts participating employees. In the post-pandemic context of unprecedented challenges of healthcare worker burnout and stress, effective innovation training programs should be considered as a tool to improve worker experience and retention as well as patient care.

In this chapter, I will outline the labels of giftedness and underachievement and present the theoretical debates surrounding these labels. A historicist examination of these labels follows, highlighting how the gifted underachievement (GUA) label emerges through the negation of “giftedness.” Subsequently, I explore the concept of GUA and its negative connotations, stemming from the positive valuation inherent in the term “giftedness” and its implications for what is considered “normal.” This chapter also reviews perspectives on shifting the focus away from the individual within the current paradigm of labeling giftedness and explores insights from systemic thinking and symbolic interactionism (SI). The conclusion underscores the necessity of a symbolic interactionist perspective to address the gaps in research on the labeling of giftedness and underachievement. Finally, I propose a generic definition that can be used in GUA research in the light of SI.

The apparent contemporary corporate model is that of a “responsible firm” – a firm that pursues not only profit and shareholder return but also considers the concerns and interests of its social and environmental stakeholders. Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR), investor recognition via environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, and long-term sustainability has developed into an established field of study. We attempt to clarify the terminologies and models of this field by conducting a brief review of the existing work and suggesting an integrated conceptual framework for CSR, ESG, and sustainability in a domestic and global context. We suggest that externality and temporality are the drivers of this integrated framework.

A “state-driven” approach suggests that colonists use census categories to rule. However, a “society-driven” approach suggests that this state-driven perspective confers too much power upon states. A third approach views census-taking and official categorization as a product of state–society interaction that depends upon: (a) the population's lay categories, (b) information intellectuals' ability to take up and transform these lay categories, and (c) the balance of power between social and state actors. We evaluate the above positions by analyzing official records, key texts, travelogues, and statistical memoirs from three key periods in India: Indus Valley civilization through classical Gupta rule (ca. 3300 BCE–700 CE), the “medieval” period (ca. 700–1700 CE), and East India Company (EIC) rule (1757–1857 CE), using historical narrative. We show that information gathering early in the first period was society driven; however, over time, a strong interactive pattern emerged. Scribes (information intellectuals) increased their social status and power (thus, shifting the balance of power) by drawing on caste categories (lay categories) and incorporating them into official information gathering. This intensification of interactive information gathering allowed the Mughals, the EIC, and finally British direct rule officials to collect large quantities of information. Our evidence thus suggests that the intensification of state–society interactions over time laid the groundwork for the success of the direct rule British censuses. It also suggests that any transformative effect of these censuses lay in this interactive pattern, not in the strength of the British colonial state.

Richard Nixon and his advisors were aware of the inherent economic problems of wage–price controls: suppressed inflation, shortages, biases, avoidance, cheating, etc. Nixon's secret White House tapes reveal that Nixon disliked controls, never expecting them to extinguish inflation but only agreed to them to deflect attention from devaluation of the dollar. The political popularity of his controls changed his view of them, even producing a second freeze on retail prices in 1973. Importantly, the tapes reveal that Nixon pushed for inflationary monetary policies long after his 1972 reelection. Federal Reserve Chair, Arthur Burns, seemingly capitulated to Nixon's pressures by restraining interest rate increases in Federal Open Market Committee meetings. Politics won out over economics. Nixon and his advisors avoided addressing the reason for increasing inflation – the monetary expansion that Nixon pressured Arthur Burns to pursue in support of his 1972 re-election – an expansion that continued long after the election. This tragic policy failure was avoidable had the administration focused on controlling the true cause of the inflation.

The objective of this study is to examine the moderating effect of microfinance on the digital divide in developing countries.

On the methodology, the econometric method employed to estimate the equation is based on the two-stage least squares (2SLS).

This study confirms that microfinance can play an important role in mitigating the adverse effect of digitalization on poverty.

Thus, governments should prioritize and encourage the integration of digital technologies with robust microfinance systems to effectively combat poverty, given the importance of microfinance.

Given the importance of digital technology to businesses and economic development, we need to search for a better solution that allows digital technology to be further developed but at the same time, is not harmful to the poor. The issue of the poor, either financially or technically can be partially resolved if the poor is given the necessary and sufficient assistance. Therefore, this paper examines whether microfinance can be part of solutions to the digital divide in developing countries.

This chapter explains the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) powered by big data in technology and its contribution in knowledge-based marketing in B2B and its impact on rational decision-making in B2B marketing that affects business performance. This chapter is literature review prepared by compiling and reviewing previous literature, studies, articles, books and other sources related to the contribution of big data-enabled AI to B2B marketing. According to the information analysed, the findings show that big data supported by AI plays a significant role in creating user knowledge, external knowledge and customer knowledge, all of which are factors that significantly influence the ability of business-to-business marketers to make rational decisions that affect the performance of their companies. This chapter explains to them the phenomena of AI powered by big data and its effect on B2B marketing rational decision that will enhance company performance and its contribution on knowledge-based marketing in B2B. This chapter contributes to understanding main functions and interactions of AI system powered by big data and how such a system helps in B2B marketing by generating knowledge about customers, users and markets.

The personalities of leaders have been shown to impact the culture of their organizations and are also expected to have a more distal impact on the firm’s financial performance. However, the authors also expect that leader gender is an important intervening variable such that exhibiting various personality dimensions may result in unique cultural and performance-based outcomes for women and men leaders. Thus, the authors seek to examine first the impact of leader personality on organizational performance, as driven through organizational culture as a mediating mechanism. In doing so, the authors propose the expected impact of specific personality dimensions on certain types of organizational cultures, and those cultures’ subsequent impact on the organization’s performance. The authors then extend to consider the moderating effects of leader gender on the relationship between leader personality and organization. To support their propositions, the authors draw from upper echelons and implicit leadership theories. The authors encourage researchers to consider the proposition within a sample of the largest publicly traded US companies (i.e., Fortune 500) at an important era in history such that for the first time, 10% of these companies are led by women. In doing so, the authors hope to understand the leadership dynamics at the highest echelons of corporate governance and provide actionable insights for companies aiming to optimize their leadership composition and drive sustainable performance.