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In recent decades, childhood in Japan has undergone significant transformations. Government policies geared at boosting women's labor force participation, a declining fertility rate, rising costs of having children on the one hand, and increased spending on public childcare and support measures for families, on the other hand, contribute to these ongoing changes. Having only one child is becoming the norm while mothers' role in society is shifting. The traditional family structure is moving from the previously predominant male breadwinner model to more dual-earner families. Children now spend significant amounts of time in care and education institutions.

In this chapter, we analyze current configurations of early childhood in institutions and the family from a policy perspective and regarding children's predominant education and care arrangements. Drawing on various survey data sets and evidence from demographic statistics to pedagogical ethnographies, we look at how childcare policies and families reshape the organization of children's lives and outline how institutions and educators create learning experiences aligned with the values of a collectivist society. However, despite being deeply rooted in traditional child-rearing goals, many parents also subscribe to rigorous educational arrangements from early childhood onwards to prepare children for success in a competitive education system. The chapter finishes with an outlook on future directions of how policymakers and the ongoing institutionalization of childhood continue to change children's lives.

This assignment is designed to enhance resilience among students in leadership courses. It leverages the US Army’s Master Resilience Training (MRT) framework and positive psychology to develop resiliency skills.

A three-part experiential workshop integrates academic readings (providing a foundation of resilience concepts), explores the influence of personal identities on leadership and connects leadership skills with resilience concepts.

Participants reflect on self-awareness tools and positive psychology and create personalized action plans. Participants' resilience skills are enhanced with their personalized resiliency plan.

The program provides a structured approach to resilience training, which can be integrated into university curriculums. Students gain self-awareness and psychological tools to manage challenges, which are valuable for personal growth and professional development. There is a persistent gender gap in leadership, and for women to attain greater parity in leadership positions, resilience skills are imperative. By focusing on identity-related factors, the program prepares future leaders for challenges in attaining leadership positions.

This program is uniquely tailored for students aspiring to leadership positions, with an emphasis on the role of identity, such as gender, in leader emergence and overcoming related challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether attention, emotion, and cognitive regulation (CR) may be strategies to advance one’s ethnic identity.

The paper is presented in three parts. The first section discusses integrative inquiry (INIQ) (Bresciani Ludvik et al., 2016), a mindfulness methodology and mindful inquiry training program, as a potential pathway to help mitigate stress and enhance healthy development and well-being strategies that combat stressors related to ethnic and racial identity; and increase opportunities for positive ethnic identity development. INIQ was designed to influence areas of the brain associated with attention regulation, emotion regulation, and CR in order to decrease stress and anxiety, and heighten executive functions of undergraduate and graduate students. The second section discusses an exploratory study to see whether INIQ resulted in higher mean scores for participants on their ethnic identity, as assessed by the multigroup ethnic identity measure (Phinney, 1992).

The results indicated that there was a significant increase in pre-test and post-test scores for mindfulness (p=0.001) as well as the dependent measure for learning exploration (p=0.028) among 30 undergraduate, master’s- and doctoral-seeking students. There was also a non-significant increase for clear understanding (p=0.15) and overall ethnic identity achievement (p=0.387); and non-significant decrease for ethnic belonging (p=0.424).

These findings suggest that INIQ may increase students’ ethnic learning exploration, which is an important process in ethnic identity development (Phinney and Ong, 2007). This study also suggests that INIQ increases mindfulness in participants. The authors conclude with a discussion and recommendations to future INIQ and other diversity centered student support practitioners interested in influencing positive ethnic identity formation.

The green logistics literature remains undecided on how collaboration between shippers (i.e. logistics buyers) and logistics service providers (LSPs) may facilitate green logistics practices (GLPs). This paper identifies two types of collaboration mechanisms, relation specific and knowledge sharing, to systematically examine their influence on facilitating the different types of GLPs – as seen by shippers versus LSPs.

Survey responses of 169 shippers and 162 LSPs in Sweden were collected and analysed using exploratory- and confirmatory factor analysis, followed by multiple regression analysis.

The findings reveal that neither of the actors consistently favour a certain type of collaboration mechanisms for facilitating all types of GLPs. Although it was found that both actors share the same view on the role of collaboration mechanisms for some GLPs, their views took contrasting forms for others.

This study contributes to the green logistics literature by incorporating a trilateral distinction to present collaboration recommendations for GLPs, based on (1) the collaboration mechanism at play, (2) the actor's perspective and (3) the GLP in question.

Insights are offered to managers at shipper/LSP firms to apply the right (“fit for purpose”) collaboration mechanisms in their relationships with their logistics partners with respect to the desired GLPs.

This is one of the first large-scale studies to systematically reveal in what way collaboration can facilitate the different types of GLPs.

The aim of this study is to examine the role of organizational climate in employees’ creative performance using the public sector as an empirical context. The employees’ creative performance is divided into two entities and studied as two separate effect variables: individual creativity and individual innovative behavior.

A conceptual model is developed and tested in a survey in which employees of a public sector organization participated.

The findings indicate that organizational climate has an important role in employees’ creative performance. The organizational climate showed a positive and significant link to the two creative performance variables included in this study. Moreover, the study revealed that individual creativity mediates the relationship between organizational climate and individual innovative behavior.

This paper is limited to examining the role of organizational climate on two creative performance variables related to individual employees in the public sector. To trigger individual creativity and individual innovative behavior in the public sector, there is a need for managers to build, develop and maintain an organizational climate that supports both employees’ creativity and enthusiasm in implementing those novel and useful ideas.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first in the public sector to demonstrate the importance of organizational climate for employees’ individual creative performance. The findings of this study adds to our current knowledge and understanding of the value of organizational climate, and its influence on individual creative performance in the public sector.

Based on the assumption of the service-dominant logic (S-D logic) that every exchange is service-for-service and on the relevance of the beneficiary’s role in the co-creation of value, this paper aims to investigate the effects of engagement in the context of social marketing, where the value proposition is an invitation to practice mindfulness.

A field experiment was carried out with 72 volunteers, using a pre-test/post-test control group design. The treatment applied was a set of strategies to increase the engagement of the participants to attain a better result in five dependent variables associated mainly with the benefits of mindfulness practice. Measurements were made from a profile analysis, and submitted to Mann-Whitney and t-tests.

A large effect of group and time factors were observed in the multivariate test, as well as differences in the co-creation of value between groups.

This study can contribute to stimulate experimental transdisciplinary research in humans, using concepts from S-D logic and social marketing to promote positive behavioral change. This approach is probably more efficient at explaining and improving human behavior, given its complex nature.