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This study has applied the model by Baldwin and Ford (1988) to empirically examine the influence of select trainee characteristics (i.e. instrumentality and motivation to transfer) and transfer design as a training design factor on the transfer of training to work. It also investigates the possible mediating role of the motivation to transfer and the moderating role of social support at work (comprising supervisor and peer support) in the transfer mechanism.

A self-reported questionnaire was used to survey employees working in a power major in India. In the first stage, we selected one geographical region of the organization using judgmental sampling. In the next stage, executives and non-executives from all five coal-based power stations in that region were selected using systematic sampling. Responses from 411 such employees were analyzed using PROCESS Macro in SPSS. A mediation analysis was done using Model 4, while the moderated mediation hypotheses were tested using Model 7 in PROCESS Macro.

Instrumentality and transfer design were found to impact training transfer through motivation to transfer. While supervisor support moderated the mediational impact of both predictors through transfer motivation, peer support moderated only the impact of instrumentality on transfer through transfer motivation.

This is the first empirical work that has integrated important predictors at trainee, training design, and work environment levels based on the perspective of factors an organization can control. Besides, establishing supervisor and peer support as contextual factors adds to the celebrated model by Baldwin and Ford.

This paper focuses on image-to-text manuscript processing through Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), a Machine Learning (ML) approach enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). With HTR now achieving high levels of accuracy, we consider its potential impact on our near-future information environment and knowledge of the past.

In undertaking a more constructivist analysis, we identified gaps in the current literature through a Grounded Theory Method (GTM). This guided an iterative process of concept mapping through writing sprints in workshop settings. We identified, explored and confirmed themes through group discussion and a further interrogation of relevant literature, until reaching saturation.

Catalogued as part of our GTM, 120 published texts underpin this paper. We found that HTR facilitates accurate transcription and dataset cleaning, while facilitating access to a variety of historical material. HTR contributes to a virtuous cycle of dataset production and can inform the development of online cataloguing. However, current limitations include dependency on digitisation pipelines, potential archival history omission and entrenchment of bias. We also cite near-future HTR considerations. These include encouraging open access, integrating advanced AI processes and metadata extraction; legal and moral issues surrounding copyright and data ethics; crediting individuals’ transcription contributions and HTR’s environmental costs.

Our research produces a set of best practice recommendations for researchers, data providers and memory institutions, surrounding HTR use. This forms an initial, though not comprehensive, blueprint for directing future HTR research. In pursuing this, the narrative that HTR’s speed and efficiency will simply transform scholarship in archives is deconstructed.

Human resource development (HRD) poses complex challenges for scholars and practitioners due to its elusive nature in definition, scope, and boundaries. Driven by lived experiences, this integrative literature review aims to explore the complexities of HRD, focusing on its conceptualizations, boundaries, and trajectories from 1990 to 2023.

Using Callahan’s (2014) Six Ws, Page et al. (2020) Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses search process, and Lester et al. (2020) thematic analysis, 26 peer-reviewed articles from leading HRD journals and databases were analyzed.

This literature review’s findings enhance our understanding of HRD’s trajectory by illuminating its tumultuous beginnings, precarious present, and uncertain future – potentially even its demise. The author urges prominent HRD scholars to take decisive action to secure the discipline’s future before it is too late.

One limitation is the reliance on specific articles for data analysis. The propensity to emphasize only the prevailing viewpoint is a constraint inherent in literature reviews (Dickson et al., 2011). Another limitation is this study’s reliance on articles exclusively from English-speaking literature. By focusing solely on publications in English, this study overlooked HRD literature published in other languages, potentially excluding valuable insights and perspectives from non-English-speaking regions and cultures.

Over the years, the debates regarding the definition of HRD have been fraught with ambiguity and contradictions. The boundaries of HRD remain similarly nebulous, with scholars debating its scope and applicability across contexts. This literature review adds to this debate from a unique perspective.

A learning-focused culture promotes creativity, innovativeness and the acquisition of novel insights and competencies. The study aims to explore the relationship between human resource development (HRD) practice and employee competencies using organizational learning culture as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 828 employees of 37 health care institutions comprising 24 (internationally-owned) and 13 (indigenously-owned). Construct reliability and validity was established through a confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Data supported the hypothesized relationships. The results show that training and development and employee competencies were significantly related. Career development and employee competencies were significantly related. Organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between training and development and employee competencies. However, organizational learning culture did not mediate the relationship between career development and employee competencies.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s health care focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers to policy makers and stakeholders of health care institutions in developing system-level capacities that promote continuous learning and adaptive learning cultures to ensure sustainability and competitive advantage.

By evidencing empirically that organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between HRD practices and employee competencies the study extends the literature.

Drawing insights from institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether and to what extent banks have reconfigured their management control systems (MCSs) in response to growing institutional pressures towards sustainability, understood as environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The authors conducted an exploratory study at the three largest Italian banking groups to shed light on changes made in MCSs to account for ESG issues. The analysis is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the sustainability and controls areas, as well as from other relevant operational areas particularly concerned with the integration process of ESG issues. Additionally, secondary data sources were used. The Malmi and Brown (2008) MCS framework, consisting of a package of five types of formal and informal control mechanisms, was used to structure and analyse the empirical data.

The examined banks widely implemented numerous changes to their MCSs as a response to the heightened sustainability pressures from regulatory bodies and stakeholders. In particular, with the exception of action planning, the results show an extensive integration of ESG issues into the five control mechanisms of Malmi and Brown’s framework, namely, long-term planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and cultural controls.

By identifying the approaches banks followed in reconfiguring traditional MCSs, this research sheds light on how adequate MCSs can promote banks’ “sustainable behaviours”. The results can, thus, contribute to defining best practices on how MCSs can be redesigned to support the integration of ESG issues into the banks’ way of doing business.

Overall, the findings support the theoretical assertion that institutional pressures influence the design of banks’ MCSs, and that both formal and informal controls are necessary to ensure a real engagement towards sustainability. More specifically, this study reveals that MCSs, by encompassing both formal and informal controls, are central to enabling banks to appropriately understand, plan and control the transition towards business models fully oriented to the integration of ESG issues. Thereby, this allows banks to effectively respond to the increased stakeholder demands around ESG concerns.

From a public health perspective, vaccination programmes significantly add to long-term, safe co-existence. However, because there is no social consensus about their benefits and risks, the promotion of vaccinations is difficult. Based on Kim and Grunig’s situational theory of problem solving (STOPS), including communicative action in problem solving (CAPS), this paper both proposes a model for identifying the involvement of mothers of young children in communication regarding vaccination and advocates for a novel approach to STOPS and CAPS data analyses.

The methodological design develops empirical analyses of the data yielded by the STOPS model. Two approaches to determining associations between situational-motivational variables and communicative-action variables in random-sample survey data obtained in Slovenia in 2016 (N = 1704) are implemented – i.e. visual methods and multivariate agglomerative clustering algorithm.

The STOPS model has been confirmed and both data-analyses approaches have shown potential by clearly demonstrating associations and patterns in the data. Based on these findings, we conclude that they have the potential to be the norm in analysing STOPS models.

Limitations of the study, which are still to be overcome, involve drawing on one sample in one country and testing only one set of indicators.

From an academic point of view, confirmation of both the model and the analytical power of the pragmatic data-analyses methods significantly add to communication studies. From practical and social points of view, relationships among attitudes and communication behaviour, as outlined in the exposed segments of the public, enable the improvement of every step in strategic-communication planning and implementation.

This paper fulfils an identified need to establish a theoretical framework and methodology of segmentation in vaccination-communication studies.

This study aims to test the effect of a falsely balanced message (i.e. exposure to two opposing arguments) on perceived expert consensus about an interrogation practice.

Participants (N = 254) read a statement about minimization tactics and were assigned randomly to one of four conditions, where true expert consensus about the tactic was either presented as high or low, and a balanced message (i.e. read two opposing arguments about the factual nature of the tactic) was present or absent.

Results showed that exposure to balanced messages led to less perceived expert consensus; especially when true expert consensus about the tactic was high. Exposure to balanced messages also reduced public support for experts testifying about the interrogation tactic.

Such findings suggest that pairing expert knowledge (i.e. empirical evidence) about investigative interviewing issues with denials might be powerful enough to override scientific beliefs about important matters in this field.

Researchers in the field of investigative interviewing have put much effort into developing evidence-based interviewing practices and debunking misconceptions on the field. While knowledge mobilization is particularly important in this consequential, applied domain, there are some individuals who aim to hinder the advancement and reform of investigative interviewing. Falsely balancing scientific findings (e.g. minimization tactics imply leniency) with denials is but one of many practices that can distort the public’s perception of expert consensus on an issue. It is crucial for investigative interviewing researchers to recognize such strategies and develop ways to combat science denialism.