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The purpose of this study is to find the connection between leader behaviour and employee sickness absence in public administration.

The research data was collected with the help of an online questionnaire. The SPSS statistical programme and structural equation modelling in AMOS were used to analyse the data.

The research was conducted in public administration institutions, and 3,220 employees from public administration were included in the research sample. The author found a negative one-way relationship between certain types of behaviour and sickness absence. The author defines leader behaviour as a multidimensional construct in which each dimension represents a separate cluster of leader behavioural characteristics. Leaders’ “progressiveness” is the most important dimension, and a one-point increase in “progressiveness” (five-point scale) leads to a reduction of 2.8 days in sickness absence for one employee.

The author focused only on one segment of factors (the behaviour of leaders) that affects sickness absence. To explain the maximum possible measure of the variability in sickness absence, it would be best to include several different influencing factors.

The study represents a structured model of the link between sickness absence and leader behaviour. With the model, it is possible to determine which behavioural forms of leaders influence sickness absence, where leader behaviour is treated as a complex whole, and not as an individual behavioural characteristic.

The study addresses calls for research on the relationship between leader behaviour and employee sickness absence within countries.

The purpose of this study is to describe the implementation of a digital-based team coaching intervention aimed at improving team communication in the workplace through social network visualization. The study examined recipients’ perceptions of the intervention at two time points and assessed the temporal stability of various factors, including the intervention’s integrity, design, transferability, acceptance and the usability of the adopted visualization tool. The moderating role of digital usability was also evaluated.

Four team coaching sessions were delivered to 62 participants from seven teams across three departments within a large public health-care organization in Northern Italy. Perceptions of the intervention dimensions were collected after the second and fourth sessions.

Results indicated that, at both time points, recipients appreciated the intervention’s integrity and usability more than its design, transferability and acceptance. Furthermore, no significant changes in recipients’ perceptions were observed over time. The transferability of the intervention was significantly associated with its acceptance, but only when the usability of the digital tool was high.

The study enriches existing literature on digital interventions in group communication by focusing on process dimensions like recipients’ perceptions of various aspects and the implementation process. Furthermore, the study underscores the potential of integrating specific techniques such as sociomapping and coaching within health-care organizations, encouraging more research and development in these areas.

The study emphasizes the critical role of usability and integrity in digital-based team coaching interventions, suggesting that high-quality, user-friendly tools not only lead to initial effectiveness but also sustain positive impacts over time, while also increasing transferability and acceptance.

The present study uniquely deploys a longitudinal approach to examine recipients’ perceptions of a digital-based intervention that combines social network visualization and team coaching to enhance team communication.

The subject of this paper is the idea of Brain–Computer Interface (BCI). The main goal is to assess the potential impact of BCI on the design, use and evaluation of information retrieval systems operating in libraries.

The method of literature review was used to establish the state of research. The search according to accepted queries was carried out in the Scopus database and complementary in Google Scholar. To determine the state of research on BCI on the basis of library and information science, a specialist LISTA abstract database was also searched. The most current papers published in the years 2015–2019 in the English language or having at least an abstract in this language were taken into account.

The analysis showed that BCI issues are extremely popular in subject literature from various fields, mainly computer science, but practically does not occur in the context of using this technology in information retrieval systems.

Due to the fact that BCI solutions are not yet implemented in libraries and are rarely the subject of scientific considerations in the field of library and information science, this article is mainly based on literature from other disciplines. The goal was to consider how much BCI solutions can affect library information retrieval systems. The considerations presented in this article are theoretical in nature due to the lack of empirical materials on which to base. The author's assumption was to initiate a discussion about BCI on the basis of library and information science, not to propose final solutions.

The results can be widely used in practice as a framework for the implementation of BCI in libraries.

The article can help to facilitate the debate on the role of implementing new technologies in libraries.

The problem of BCI is very rarely addressed in the subject literature in the field of library and information science.

Quality management practitioners have yet to cease the potential of digitalisation. Furthermore, there is a lack of tools such as frameworks guiding practitioners in the digital transformation of their organisations. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework to guide quality practitioners with the implementation of digitalisation in their existing practices.

A review of literature assessed how quality management and digitalisation have been integrated. Findings from the literature review highlighted the success of the integration of Lean manufacturing with digitalisation. A comprehensive list of Lean Six Sigma tools were then reviewed in terms of their effectiveness and relevance for the hybrid digitisation approach to process improvement (HyDAPI) framework.

The implementation of the proposed HyDAPI framework in an industrial case study led to increased efficiency, reduction of waste, standardised work, mistake proofing and the ability to root cause non-conformance products.

The activities and tools in the HyDAPI framework are not inclusive of all techniques from Lean Six Sigma.

The HyDAPI framework is a flexible guide for quality practitioners to digitalise key information from manufacturing processes. The framework allows organisations to select the appropriate tools as needed. This is required because of the varying and complex nature of organisation processes and the challenge of adapting to the continually evolving Industry 4.0.

This research proposes the HyDAPI framework as a flexible and adaptable approach for quality management practitioners to implement digitalisation. This was developed because of the gap in research regarding the lack of procedures guiding organisations in their digital transition to Industry 4.0.

The “what is beautiful is good” (WIBIG) effect implies that observers tend to perceive physically attractive people in a positive light. The authors investigate how the WIBIG effect applies to user personas, measuring designers' perceptions and task performance when employing user personas for the design of information technology (IT) solutions.

In a user experiment, the authors tested six different personas with 235 participants that were asked to develop remote work solutions based on their interaction with a fictitious user persona.

The findings showed that a user persona's perceived attractiveness was positively correlated with other perceptions of the persona. The personas' completeness, credibility, empathy, likability and usefulness increased with attractiveness. More attractive personas were also perceived as more agreeable, emotionally stable, extraverted and open, and the participants spent more time engaging with personas they perceived attractive. A linguistic analysis indicated that the IT solutions created for more attractive user personas demonstrated a higher degree of affect, but for the most part, task outputs did not vary by the personas' perceived attractiveness.

The WIBIG effect applies when designing IT solutions with user personas, but its effect on task outputs appears limited. The perceived attractiveness of a user persona can impact how designers interact with and engage with the persona, which can influence the quality or the type of the IT solutions created based on the persona. Also, the findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

The findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

Because personas are created to closely resemble real people, the authors might expect the WIBIG effect to apply. The WIBIG effect might lead decision makers to favor more attractive personas when designing IT solutions. However, despite its potential relevance for decision making with personas, as far as the authors know, no prior study has investigated whether the WIBIG effect extends to the context of personas. Overall, it is important to understand how human factors apply to IT system design with personas, so that the personas can be created to minimize potentially detrimental effects as much as possible.

Left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) is a structural interventional cardiology procedure that offers several possibilities for the application of additive manufacturing technologies. The literature shows a growing interest in the use of 3D-printed models for LAAO procedure planning and occlusion device choice. This study aims to describe a full workflow to create a 3D-printed LAA model for LAAO procedure planning.

The workflow starts with the patient’s computed tomography diagnostic image selection. Segmentation in a commercial software provides initial geometrical models in standard tessellation language (STL) format that are then preprocessed for print in dedicated software. Models are printed using a commercial stereolithography machine and postprocessing is performed.

Models produced with the described workflow have been used at the Careggi Hospital of Florence as LAAO auxiliary planning tool in 10 cases of interest, demonstrating a good correlation with state-of-the-art software for device selection and improving the surgeon’s understanding of patient anatomy and device positioning.

3D-printed models for the LAAO planning are already described in the literature. The novelty of the article lies in the detailed description of a robust workflow for the creation of these models. The robustness of the method is demonstrated by the coherent results obtained for the 10 different cases studied.