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Readmissions to the hospital are expensive and can have negative health consequences for patients. Older adults are at greater risk of readmission. Patient perspectives are valuable in identifying areas for improvement in the transition of care. The purpose of this qualitative study is to increase our understanding of patients’ perspectives on the transition of care from hospital to primary care.

This study employs a qualitative methodology to conduct semi-structured interviews with patients who have been discharged from hospitals in the Ireland East Hospital Group region. Remote interviews were conducted with 18 participants from eight general practices. Transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis as described by Braun and Clarke.

The three main themes identified were communication, outpatient supports and patient education. Gaps in communication do occur, but patients are often too external to comment. Patients benefit from a wide variety of outpatient supports including general practice, family, carers, allied health professionals and voluntary organisations. Access and cost are barriers to these supports. Participants were generally positive towards proposed primary care-based interventions such as follow-up appointments with general practitioners (GPs) and education sessions.

This study highlights a number of areas for improvement in the transition of care in current practice including communication between services and access to outpatient care. It also suggests directions for further research, such as explorations of healthcare provider perspectives and pilot studies of readmission reduction interventions.

The purpose of this study is to theoretically clarify under which circumstances MNCs should outsource the innovation function. In the globalization era, multinational companies (MNCs) face the challenge of making a strategic decision. They ought to adjudicate upon outsourcing the research and development, i.e. innovation function and bearing the risks of it, or keeping innovation function in house and paying the price of this decision. This decision becomes more crucial when the host country has dissimilar characteristic and high uncertainty compared to the home country.

This study is among the very first studies that evaluate the issue of outsourcing innovation for MNCs from a transaction cost economics (TCE) theoretical perspective. By setting forward propositions that serve as a guideline for conditions in which MNCs should outsource innovation, this paper contributes to innovation, new product development, global business and, last but not least, to the TCE literature. This study also provides managerial implications and avenues of future research for academicians.

This study shows that heterogeneity between the home and host country affects the autonomy of the innovation at the host country; this autonomy in turn leads to higher transaction cost, and finally, transaction cost is the main determinant of the decision on whether to outsource the innovation.

This study fills this gap by looking at the problem of outsourcing innovation from a TCE theoretical perspective and, based on an extensive literature review, puts forward a set of propositions that clarify under which circumstances MNCs should outsource the innovation function.

In the early to mid-twentieth century, psychiatrist-led occupational therapy departments emerged in Irish psychiatric hospitals. This marked a transition towards establishing rehabilitative services in institutional settings. This paper aims to examine the development of occupational therapy in Grangegorman Mental Hospital and its auxiliary hospital, Portrane Mental Hospital from 1934-1954.

Historical documentary research methods were used to analyse primary source data from Grangegorman Committee Minutes, Inspector of Mental Hospital Reports, Boroughs of Mental Hospitals, Department of Foreign Affairs documents and newspaper archives. The archival data was analysed using both a chronological and thematic approach.

The main key event emerged in 1935 when four Grangegorman nursing staff were sent to Cardiff Mental Hospital to undergo a six month training course in occupational therapy. The following themes emerged – “establishing occupational therapy in Grangegorman and Portrane”; “the role of short-course trained nursing staff in providing occupational therapy services” and “therapeutic rationales vs hospital management rationales”.

This study throws light on the early practitioners of occupational therapy in Grangegorman and highlights the complexities of occupational therapy’s role origins in mid-twentieth century Ireland. In line with contemporaneous psychiatric hospitals, the occupational therapy activities promoted in Grangegorman were mainly handicraft or productivity based. The absence of patients’ voices means there are limitations to determining the therapeutic nature of this early occupational therapy service.

Feedback is crucial in a learning process, particularly in an online interaction where both learners and instructors are distantly located. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the association between feedback strategies, embedded course syllabus and learning improvement in the Sakai Learning Management System.

This paper uses a survey design to collect cross-sectional data from adult distance learning students. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and a standard multiple regression model in Stata.

The results show that feedback strategies (timing, mode, quality and quantity) and embedded course syllabus have a significant relationship with learning improvement. However, the feedback strategy – target – is not significantly related to learning improvement though it is the highest feedback strategy.

This paper has contributed to the extant literature by providing empirical evidence to support the constructivism theory of learning from a distance learning perspective in a developing country. The study has shown that if the feedback strategies are well managed and applied, they would make a considerable impact on distance education students' academic pursuits. Hence, the paper provides a pedagogical foundation for short and long-term distance learning policy.

Bystander apathy has been a source of debate for decades. In the past half-century, psychologists developed theoretical frameworks to understand bystander activity, commonly referred to as bystander intervention models (BIMs). More recently, BIMs have been modified to facilitate initiatives to prevent various forms of online victimization. This chapter begins with a review of BIMs and recent applications of bystander intervention research to online environments. We also present several future directions for research along with applications for reducing technology-facilitated violence, including programming recommendations and theoretical development.

Logistics and supply chain management has been elevated to a strategic level whereby firms can simultaneously achieve differentiation and low cost for sustained competitive advantage. Empirical studies have often concentrated on logistics management in developed Western countries, displaying a bias towards the USA. This study applies the competency approach to explore logistics in Taiwan. A survey of 1,200 manufacturing firms was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between logistics competency, logistics performance, and financial performance, using exploratory factor analysis and the structural equation modelling technique. Four logistics competencies, namely, integration and knowledge competency, customer focused logistics competency, measurement competency, and agility competency were identified. The research findings revealed that (1) logistics competency was significantly related to logistics performance but not significantly associated with financial performance, and (2) logistics performance was positively associated with financial performance. These findings also implied that logistics competency has an indirect effect on financial performance through logistics performance. This finding confirmed the “world-class” logistics competencies (i.e. positioning, integration, agility, and measurement) as identified by MSUGLRT (1995). In addition, it suggests that logistics competency in a huge geographic area such as America can have the same effect in a smaller geographic area such as Taiwan.

This study was conducted to explore the motives and experiences of founders of community based nonprofit organizations. The information collected in this study will be useful to extension leadership educators as they work with the leaders in developing and sustaining these organizations that address needs unmet by government or other organizations. The results show these founders have strong motivation influenced by early experiences. They were confident and were able to handle both obstacles and opportunities. They clearly perceived themselves as leaders. The findings of this study will be used to develop a more comprehensive profile of community leaders that start community based nonprofit organizations. Extension leadership educators have an opportunity and a challenge to work with these emerging leaders.

Current literature argues that citizen engagement platforms must be used to gather citizens’ feedback to provide improved quality of services to citizens. However, limited studies consider the challenges faced by practitioners at the local level during the incorporation of those feedback for continuous service improvement. As a result, these services fail to fulfil the need of citizens. The purpose of this study is to structure the relationship between citizens’ feedback and continuous service improvement to meet the need of citizens.

Design science research methodology has been adapted under which a case study approach has been followed to investigate one of the citizens’ engagement platforms in Ireland.

The results from this study highlighted that practitioners faced challenges (e.g. capacity, risk and constraints) in terms of fulfilling the needs of citizens and there is a lack of structured approach to continuously provide improved services to them.

This study provides a structured approach in the form of a process model to showcase how citizens’ feedback can be incorporated for continuously providing improved services to the citizens.

This research provides a prescriptive view to assist municipalities during the incorporation of citizens’ feedback for continuous service improvement while addressing the challenges they face during this process.

This paper proposes a process model based on the guidelines of the open group architecture framework enterprise architecture and the collaboration with practitioners that would assist local authorities in continuously providing improved services to the citizens.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the communicative constitution of organizational inclusion and/or exclusion through humorous acts at the expense of members of minorities and/or historically disadvantaged groups.

Semistructured interviews with 84 employees in Austria and Germany dealing with their experiences regarding diversity and inclusion (D&I) at work were conducted and analyzed in two steps. First, a thematic text analysis was performed to structure the content and identify relevant themes and anecdotes for further analysis. Second, a ventriloquial analysis sought to identify the physically absent yet present voices in these anecdotes.

The interviews revealed that jokes and quips mostly target colleagues of observable foreign origin. The analysis further identified three themes that show that disparaging humor can simultaneously reinforce inclusion/exclusion across hierarchies and create boundaries within teams – but in different ways. The findings also indicate that above all prejudices “participate” in such events and that in most cases the collective is invoked to increase the joke's “authority”.

This research is the first one that investigates humor in the context of D&I through a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) lens, which facilitates studying the constitutive character of humorous communication in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Moreover, this is one of the first empirical humor studies to draw on established theory-driven concepts of inclusion-exclusion in its analysis.