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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on service quality and value co-creation and co-destruction by unpacking the phenomenon described as “difficult customers”, which has many associated costs for service organizations. The paper examines how frontline service employees make sense of and react to client behaviors that disrupt service processes.

This is a qualitative study with 128 frontline workers, who were interviewed about their perceptions, explanations and reactions to problem-related customers, using a sensemaking perspective.

Content analysis revealed 17 themes related to workers' perceptions, explanations and reactions to problem-related customers. Workers classify behaviors of problem-related customers in terms exceeding the single notion of intentionality that dominates the literature, instead referring to the degree of both controllability and malevolence of customers. Service workers choose a wide range of behavioral reactions that have not been studied before.

A convenience sample, although large, limits generalizability. Suggestions for future quantitative research are proposed.

Based on the findings, the authors suggest specific directions related to managerial policy and organizational practices related to training and employee empowerment and service recovery routines.

The study introduces a new theoretical notion of “problem-related customers”, set within a value co-creation context. It presents findings that enable deeper understanding of the emotional and behavioral reactions of frontline workers to service disruptions and offers multiple scholarly contributions, new research directions and managerial insights that can help to improve service recovery and service quality

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of core self‐evaluations (CSE) as a coping resource in customer service roles.

Questionnaires were administered to 265 service providers, measuring CSE, burnout, social stressors involved in interaction with customers (perceived customer negative behaviors and emotional regulation performed by service providers) and coping resources (service orientation and social support).

The results show that CSE is negatively related to service provider burnout as reflected in depersonalization and emotional exhaustion, and positively related to a sense of accomplishment. CSE was also negatively related to perceived customer negative behaviors and to emotional regulation. The results show a partial mediation effect of emotional regulation on the relationship between CSE and burnout. Service orientation and social support were found to interact with CSE and enhance its effect on social stressors.

The use of a non‐randomized sample might bias the results.

The results can inform managerial practices designed to enhance service providers' resources of coping with role stressors.

The study introduces a fundamental personality trait, CSE, to the area of service and shows its effect on burnout through its relationship with situational stressors and interaction with coping resources.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to point out the importance of having an ethics-related course for human resource development (HRD) graduate programs; and second, to highlight HRD potential to minimize ethical misconducts through an ethical filter in organizations.

This paper is conceptual in nature. The authors used their own experiences in HRD programs, looked at HRD graduate programs’ curricula in different universities and reviewed literature on ethics and HRD to develop a conceptual model. The model is to guide future studies and identify the role of HRD practices to create an ethical climate in organizations.

In this paper, the authors illustrate the connection between HRD practices and ethical climate in organizations by providing a conceptual framework. In the concluding paragraphs, the authors provide a discussion, implications and recommendations for future studies.

The authors highlight the limited research conducted on how ethics and ethical dilemmas need to be represented in HRD practitioners’ activities and practices. Many graduate-level HRD students do not receive enough training on ethics, whereas it is their responsibility to help improve organizational ethical climate and educate and prepare human resources to minimize ethical misconducts and wrongdoings. The paper provides a framework for HRD practitioners to create a strong ethical climate in their organizations.

This chapter focuses on a unique partnership made possible by Kazan Federal University, which has one of the largest teacher preparation programs in the Russian Republic. The partnership sponsors a scientific-practical conference known as the International Forum on Teacher Education (IFTE), arguably the most influential conference in the field of education in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries. Thousands of papers about different educational themes have been presented since 2015. Researchers share their views and their research results on the issues of modernization and development of the content of teacher education. Most recently, international guests have been playing a larger role. For example, ISATT partnered with IFTE and an ISATT regional conference flew under the IFTE banner in 2019. Many ISATT regional representatives attended. Since then, more researchers from the western world – including those from Europe and the United States – have been regularly attending IFTE, which is gaining an international reputation for being one of the most comprehensive teacher education conferences in the world.

Leaders' behavior has a critical impact on workers' safety behavior. However, previous studies have shown contradictive views on the effect of different leadership styles on safety behavior. One reason may be that the effectiveness of leaders' behavior varies according to diverse contexts. This study examines the effect of transformational and transactional leadership (TsL) on the safety behavior of on-site workers under different levels of social capital in construction projects.

Safety behavior is divided into three types: safety compliance (SC), organizational-oriented safety participation and individual-oriented safety participation (ISP). Questionnaire survey data were collected from 302 construction workers in the Chinese construction industry.

The results indicate that the positive effect of transformational leadership (TfL) of frontline supervisors on the two types of construction workers' safety participation is enhanced when social capital is high, although TfL has no significant effect on SC behavior. In contrast, TsL can promote construction workers' SC behavior and organizational-oriented safety participation and social capital positively moderating these relationships. TsL has no significant effect on ISP, but its interaction with safety behavior is positively related to ISP.

This study explains the inconsistent findings of previous research related to the role of leadership in safety behavior by introducing the social capitaltheory and distinguishing safety participation into two typesThis study is confined to one specific country, future research may benefit from investigating whether the conclusions of this study will be different in other nations with diverse cultures.

The findings of the study provide frontline supervisors with new insights into improving workers' safety and the efficiency of leadership in safety management.

This study explains the inconsistent findings of previous research related to the role of leadership in safety behavior by introducing the social capital theory and distinguishing safety participation into two types.

The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate the development of an enzyme-based sensor for haloalkane detection. Haloalkane is a toxic compound that is found as genotoxic impurities in pharmaceutical products and contaminants in waste. The need to investigate the genotoxic level in pharmaceutical manufacturing is very crucial because of its toxicity effects on human health. The potential of mini protein as an alternative bioreceptor was explored with the aim to be more effective and stable under extreme conditions.

Mini proteins of haloalkane dehalogenase (HLD) were computationally designed and experimentally validated. Tapered multimode fiber (TMMF) was bio-functionalized with a bioreceptor either native (positive control) or mini protein. The absorbance-based sensor resulting from the binding interaction of mini protein with haloalkane was monitored through a wavelength range of 200-1,300 nm.

An increment of the UV absorption is observed at 325 nm when haloalkane interacted with the immobilized bioreceptors, native or mini protein. Both biosensors displayed a continuous response over the range of 5-250 µM haloalkane. They also had the capability to detect haloalkanes below 1 min and with an operational stability of up to seven days without significant loss of sensitivity.

The results indicate the potential viability of the enzyme HLD-based sensor to monitor the existence of haloalkane in both pharmaceutical and environmental products.

The paper describes an outcome of experimental work on TMMF-based biosensor coated with HLD for label-free haloalkane detection. Mini protein can be used as an effective bioreceptor with some structural modification to improve functionality and stability.

The purpose of this study is to collect the first empirical data on the cognitive state of elderly prisoners in Germany and to examine associations between cognitive function and sociodemographic, clinical and incarceration characteristics.

All prisoners aged 60 years and older of five prisons in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, were asked to participate. The cognitive screening instruments mini-mental state examination (MMSE) and the DemTect were used to assess global cognition. Executive functions were tested with the trail making test and the frontal-assessment-battery. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) was used to assess participants’ affective state.

The sample of this study consisted of 58 prisoners with a mean age of 65.52 years (standard deviation = 6.03); 82.8% are male. Using the MMSE with age- and education-corrected z-scores, 36.9% of the prisoners showed marginal or impaired global cognition scores. Using the DemTect, 41.4% of the prisoners were classified as being cognitively impaired. Up to 40% of the prisoners showed deficits in executive functioning and around 60% of the prisoners showed depressive symptoms. The correlation analysis revealed significant associations between cognitive scores and age (rho = –0.335, p = 0.014), education (rho = 0.309, p = 0.020), sentence duration (rho = 0.409, p = 0.007) and duration of current incarceration (rho = 0.302, p = 0.043). The DemTect total score was significantly associated with the PHQ-9 (rho = –0.335, p = 0.016).

A large group of the prisoners showed a higher prevalence of cognitive dysfunction than that observed in same-age people who are not incarcerated. Taken together, there is an urgent need for an adequate management of older cognitively impaired prisoners including routine cognitive testing and guidelines-oriented treatment of cognitive symptoms.

This study has several strengths. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the cognitive and affective state in a German prison population. The authors considered female and male prisoners, as well as different prison settings, representing a realistic prison sample. The authors used several neuropsychological instruments to get a more detailed insight into the older prisoners’ cognitive status while trying to consider the economy of time and possible attention deficits to prevent dropouts during testing.