Search results

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which newly agile organizations followed 2001’s Agile Manifesto, especially in terms of the 12 principles of the agile approach, as included in the Manifesto.

The authors conducted in-depth case studies of groups in three large business organizations that had recently adopted agile. Two researchers spent one day at each site, attending daily standups and conducting interviews with managers, developers and customers.

Across the three organizations, developers were faithful to two agile principles: the primacy of delivering valuable software continually and regular reflections on the process with an eye toward improvement. The developers were uniformly unfaithful to the principle that requires face-to-face communication. Each organization varied in their adherence to the remaining nine principles. Obstacles to faithful adoption included the experience of the organization with agile, the extent to which the industry was regulated and the extent to which developers and customers were physically dispersed.

While past research on agile development is extensive, this paper examines perspectives on the method and its adoption through the lens of the original Agile Manifesto and its 12 principles. The principles were grouped into three broader categories – software delivery, people and process – to provide additional insights and to sharpen the analysis.

Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

An ageing population in the developed world has become a significant topic in the contemporary research agenda. The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of a new small-scale business model based on facilitating in-depth understanding and responding to mature female consumers’ needs and expectations towards fashionable clothing.

Two complementary approaches are used: interpretative phenomenological analysis allows the researchers to employ the life-course perspective and to develop in-depth understanding of individuals’ present experiences in relation to their past. Action research offers the possibility to develop participatory, co-design processes based on collective creativity and mutual knowledge exchange between the stakeholders.

The research finds a strong interest in fashionable clothing by women, irrespective of their age. The action-based co-design process involving collaborative encounters with mature consumers creates a dynamic capability for alternative fashion design methodologies. This approach can contribute to a small-scale fashion business model for the mature women’s fashion market.

The women in the study stress the need for a more inclusive design process and expressed a willingness to buy from a brand/retailer who would offer them such a collaborative opportunity. There are practical implications for how a more flexible sizing approach to the design of fashion for older women could be implemented.

This research makes a contribution to practice-based design solutions for mature women and a new inclusive business model based on emotional durability. The innovative methodological approach contributes to the field of ethical and sustainable fashion design.

The cardinal point to note here is that the development (and unfortunately the likely potential) of area policy is intimately related to the actual character of British social policy. Whilst area policy has been strongly influenced by Pigou's welfare economics, by the rise of scientific management in the delivery of social services (cf Jaques 1976; Whittington and Bellamy 1979), by the accompanying development of operational analyses and by the creation of social economics (see Pigou 1938; Sandford 1977), social policy continues to be enmeshed with the flavours of Benthamite utilitatianism and Social Darwinism (see, above all, the Beveridge Report 1942; Booth 1889; Rowntree 1922, 1946; Webb 1926). Consequently, for their entire history area policies have been coloured by the principles of a national minimum for the many and giving poorer areas a hand up, rather than a hand out. The preceived need to save money (C.S.E. State Apparatus and Expenditure Group 1979; Klein 1974) and the (supposed) ennobling effects of self help have been the twin marching orders for area policy for decades. Private industry is inadvertently called upon to plug the resulting gaps in public provision. The conjunction of a reluctant state and a meandering private sector has fashioned the decaying urban areas of today. Whilst a large degree of party politics and commitment has characterised the general debate over the removal of poverty (Holman 1973; MacGregor 1981), this has for the most part bypassed the ‘marginal’ poorer areas (cf Green forthcoming). Their inhabitants are not usually numerically significant enough to sway general, party policies (cf Boulding 1967) and the problems of most notably the inner cities has been underplayed.

Community colleges are an under-recognized but vital component of higher education. Public two-year colleges provide a foundation for baccalaureate degree attainment, educate a skilled math and science workforce, and support local economic development. Our research, which examines women STEM faculty at community colleges, highlights the role of gender in reproducing advantages and disadvantages within the academy.

Data were collected by face-to-face interviews with 27 women faculty at nine community colleges in Ohio. We utilized semi-structured interviewing techniques to examine key dimensions such as decision-making leading to employment in two-year institutions, perceived advantages and disadvantages of such work, job satisfaction, and challenges to balancing career and family.

Results indicate considerable satisfaction among women faculty members, but contradict a popular stereotype that work at community colleges is easier for women with families. Despite relative parity in terms of occupational composition, pay, and tenure, community colleges are gendered in that they lack formal programs, institutionalized support, and leadership opportunities to support women.

Adjunct faculty play an important role in higher education but are underrepresented in our sample. Future research is needed to examine the unique situation of part-time faculty.

Community colleges are uniquely poised to contribute to improving gender equality for women in STEM. Understanding community colleges and the academic careers of women in STEM employed by these institutions is a vital step in our nation’s efforts to develop systemic approaches to increase representation and advancement of women in STEM careers.

This paper examines the core academic leader development course at the United States Air Force Academy. The course serves as the foundation for individual leader development that is integrated across all four years of the student’s education. The basic approach uses a self-study where the student selects a current leadership role and that role serves as a common frame of reference for the entire course. Assessment strategies such as self-study, journaling, leadership application exercises are intentionally developed to integrate the classroom education into their leadership role. Through this integration the student is able to apply the leadership education real time as they have a current, relevant context in which to apply the material. Initial response to the course has been positive from both the students and the faculty. Future data collection is planned to determine the actual impact of the experience on relevant leadership outcomes.

Family Justice Centers, or “one-stop shops” that enable domestic violence victims to access a range of services at one location, are becoming increasingly common. However, there is a limited body of research examining the outcomes and planning processes of these Centers. The early phases of planning Centers are critical to their initial and ongoing success. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

In total, 15 stakeholders in a community in the early phases of planning a Center were interviewed.

Content analysis procedures were used to identify themes related to participants’ ideas about what the Family Justice Center should look like (e.g. services to include and perceived benefits and challenges for the Center), the steps required for planning it (e.g. identifying the purpose of the Center, getting key people involved, and building collaborations), and desired technologies.

This paper is the first known research effort to examine the early phases of development in constructing a Family Justice Center.

High-involvement work processes (HIWPs) are associated with high levels of employee influence over the work process, such as high levels of control over how to handle individual job tasks or a high level of involvement at team or workplace level in designing work procedures. When implementations of HIWPs are accompanied by companion investments in human capital – for example, in better information and training, higher pay and stronger employee voice – it is appropriate to talk not only of HIWPs but of “high-involvement work systems” (HIWSs). This chapter reviews the theory and practice of HIWPs and HIWSs. Across a range of academic perspectives and societies, it has regularly been argued that steps to enhance employee involvement in decision-making create better opportunities to perform, better utilization of skill and human potential, and better employee motivation, leading, in turn, to various improvements in organizational and employee outcomes.

However, there are also costs to increased employee involvement and the authors review the important economic and sociopolitical contingencies that help to explain the incidence or distribution of HIWPs and HIWSs. The authors also review the research on the outcomes of higher employee involvement for firms and workers, discuss the quality of the research methods used, and consider the tensions with which the model is associated. This chapter concludes with an outline of the research agenda, envisaging an ongoing role for both quantitative and qualitative studies. Without ignoring the difficulties involved, the authors argue, from the societal perspective, that the high-involvement pathway should be considered one of the most important vectors available to improve the quality of work and employee well-being.