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In an environment where the challenge for businesses to stay ahead of the curve calls for new ways of strategizing for future success, design holds some important clues. By broadening the definition of “design” and expanding the application of design methodologies and mindsets to business, enterprises can identify new possibilities for breakthrough multi-dimensional market solutions, step change growth strategies and organizational renewal. The purpose of this paper is to describe how to leverage design thinking into business strategies through a set of principles and practices encapsulated in the “three gears of strategic business design”.

While the methods and economic value of design in terms of objects, services, spaces, experiences and communications is well-supported, the methods for extending “design thinking” to define broader business strategies and build new models is a more recent development. In developing a more concrete development framework and substantiation for this methodology, this paper draws on evidence from two main sources. First, an in-depth review of breakthrough successes has revealed a pattern of thinking and practices that supports the core components of the strategic business design process. Second, experience in working on a variety of projects with clients across a range of industries and sectors, using the complete end-to-end methodology for business design as presented in this paper has helped construct a framework for business teams to apply in getting to bigger breakthroughs faster.

This paper demonstrates how the practice of design in a business strategy context can lead to breakthrough improvements in the delivery of human and economic value, inspire growth strategies and contribute to sustainable competitive advantage for an enterprise.

There is a growing acknowledgement of the value of design in business, and a growing interest in the value and application of design principles and practices to business in broader terms. This paper sets out to link the principles and practices of design to strategy development, and provide some concrete methods and examples of how design can be leveraged to shape more powerful strategies and breakthrough business models. This is relevant to leaders across all sectors and in any enterprise or organization seeking new ways to create high-value human-centric solutions.

Most women who serve time in prison will eventually be released and expected to reintegrate back into society. To maximize the chances of success, careful support is usually required. An example of this support work was the Healthy Relationships Program (HRP, 2016) offered to women inmates of the Adelaide Women’s Prison (South Australia) pre-release. The content of the HRP was influenced by a gender-responsive framework and constructed as a social work program. The purpose of this paper is to report on a small qualitative study that used semi-structured interviews pre- and post-program to explore women participants’ expectations, perceptions and experiences of the program. In this paper, the focus is on the women inmates’ interview transcripts where a thematic analysis was conducted. Two main research questions drove this analysis. First: How did the women experience the HRP? Second: What does their reported experience reveal about the ongoing need for gender-responsive support? The key findings are that domestic violence and relationships with children are strong motivators for participation in programs; therefore, gender-responsive support is still required in prison programs. However, the paper also advocates that future iterations of gender-responsive support and social work interventions become more consciously intersectional feminist in orientation.

A qualitative design was used to explore what women thought the HRP taught them. Individual face-to-face interviews were used to explore women’s perceptions, ideas and experiences of healthy relationships. Thematic analysis was used to draw out the themes across interviews.

The key arguments made are that gender-responsive support is still required but that future iterations of gender-responsive support become more consciously intersectional feminist in orientation.

The researchers experienced strict time restrictions to conduct interviews and therefore depth was somewhat compromised. To try and compensate for this restriction, the researchers visited potential participants as part of program recruitment and information sharing to help enable and build general rapport before the interviews. Time restrictions and prison security protocols did not allow for researchers to check transcripts with the women.

Reporting on this case study also showed that social work practice can influence relationships with institutions, such as prisons, that perpetrate marginalization and therefore enable a setting that facilitates safe participation in programs.

Gender-responsive frameworks provide the much needed validation of gender differences, but also require a feminist intersectional lens to more consciously aid in the conceptualization and evaluation of future programs for women in prison. It is this intersectional lens that is more likely to bring multiple experiences of oppression into focus so that personal issues and problems can be analyzed in a richer wider social context, particularly intersections between gender, class and/ethnicity race.

This paper has reported on women’s expectations and experiences of a health relationships program and provides insight and learnings for future practitioners intending to run similar programs. Overall, the women participants were able to articulate their own personal learnings about interpersonal relationships and were able to acknowledge the impacts of abuse and violence in their lives in the program.

The purpose of this study was to explore potential witnesses' memories for a day that was experienced an unremarkable. There may be instances in an investigation in which all leads have been exhausted, and investigators use a broad appeal for witnesses who may have witnessed something important. Investigators can benefit from knowing the types of information that may be recalled in such circumstances, as well as identifying specific methods that are effective in eliciting useful information.

The present study explored how the delay to recall and recall method influenced the recollection of a seemingly unremarkable day that later became important. Participants were asked to recall an experienced event that occurred either recently (a few weeks prior) or in the distant past (a year prior). Participants recalled via either a written method, in-person individual-spoken or collaborative-spoken interviews.

Results suggest an independent benefit for individual-spoken in-person recall (compared to written or collaborative-spoken recall) and recall undertaken closely after an event (compared to delayed recall). Both individual-spoken interviews as well as more recent recollection resulted in a greater number of overall details recalled. The authors further examined the types of details recalled that might be important to progressing an investigation (e.g. other witnesses and records).

The present work provides important implications for interviewing witnesses about a seemingly unremarkable event that later became important.

Young people are widely known to have poorer outcomes, social status and political representation than older adults. These disadvantages, which have come to be largely normalized in the contemporary context, can be further compounded by other factors, however, and are particularly amplified by coming from a lower social class background. An additional challenge for young people is associated with place, with youth who live in more remote and less urban areas at a higher risk of being socially excluded (Alston & Kent, 2009; Shucksmith, 2004) and/or to face complex and multiple barriers to employment and education than their urban-dwelling peers (Cartmel & Furlong, 2000). Drawing upon interviews and focus groups in a qualitative project with 16 young people and five practitioners, and using Nancy Fraser’s tripartite theory of social justice, this paper highlights the various and interlocking disadvantages experienced by working-class young people moving into and through adulthood in Clackmannanshire, mainland Scotland’s smallest council area.

This study aims to extend service climate research from its existing focus on routine service for external clients into a knowledge-intensive, internal (KII) service setting. This extension was important because internal knowledge workers may operate from a monopolistic perspective and not view themselves as service providers because of the technical/professional nature of their work.

Two surveys were distributed in participating organizations. One survey, completed by employees in information technology (IT) service units, contains measures of service climate, climate antecedents and technical competence. The second survey, filled out by members of their corporate customer units, taps their evaluations of service quality.

Service climate in IT service units significantly predicted service evaluations by their respective customer units. Importantly, service climate was more predictive than IT service employees’ technical competency. Role ambiguity, empowerment and work facilitation were also found to be significant service climate antecedents.

These results provided strong empirical evidence supporting an extension of the existing service climate research to KII service settings. To the extent that front-line service employees rely on internal support to deliver quality service to external customers, managers should work to enhance the service climate in internal support units, which ultimately improves external service quality.

This is the first study that establishes the robustness of the service climate construct in KII service settings. It makes service climate a useful managerial tool for improving both internal and external service quality.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how government employees perceive and react to limits on their right to express public dissent about their employer. Within the context of Canada's federal workplaces, this two‐part project sought first to analyse and clarify the nature of complex government rules on dissent, and then to explore federal employees' understanding of those rules, and the balance between the duty of loyalty owed to their employer, and their protected rights as citizens to criticize their government. The goal was to contribute to further research and improve professional practice within the federal public service in addressing employee dissent.

This research is qualitative and exploratory. Documentary and literature analysis was conducted to review Canada's laws, policies and guidelines. These were critically analysed for consistency with each other, and with their stated objectives. Employee views and perceptions were collected through a focus group of communications employees, and three in‐depth interviews. Interviews and focus group results were analysed by inference to explore employee perceptions of their duties and rights, and the authority on which their perceptions are based.

Results indicate that respondents base decisions about employee dissent on unconsciously internalized organizational values. Formal policy, training, or legal consequences had less influence on dissent than organizational culture, employee experience, and perceived career and relationship risks. Respondents valued their right to dissent, but were willing to yield it to honour a voluntary moral contract to support a higher cause (public service). The implications are that traditional theories that view employee dissent as largely self‐interested may be less relevant when employees perceive the organization's goals to be value‐driven, and that employee dissent can be minimized by promoting a value‐based organizational culture.

This paper's findings suggest that organizations might better manage reputation and minimize external employee dissent by focussing on communications that foster a value‐driven organizational culture, rather than by implementing formal limits or policies to control dissent.

This paper offers policy analysis that fulfills an identified gap in knowledge in terms of general day‐to‐day practise when it comes to advising Canada's federal employees regarding their rights and responsibilities, and offers some challenges to traditional theories that suggest employee choices regarding dissent are primarily based on individual self‐interest or self‐actualization.

According to the Census, racial/ethnic minority populations are growing at such a fast rate that by 2050 more than 50% of the population will belong to a minority group (US Census, 2001). The increasing diversity of the U.S. population is one of the many changes that health care delivery organizations need to proactively address in order to better serve their community and improve their performance. In this paper, we argue that cultural competency not only is important from a societal perspective, i.e., reducing health disparities, but can also be a strategy for health care organizations to improve quality, lower cost, and attract customers. We provide detailed recommendations for health care leaders and managers to adopt in order to successfully serve a diverse patient population.

Vocational higher education and skills are recognised as key factors in shaping an economy to adapt to fast-emerging business models that disrupt workplace behaviours. Employers require graduates to be “work-ready”, emphasising the need to demonstrate resilience, as a critical desired behaviour (CBI, 2019). This case study shares the integrated curriculum design, co-creation and operationalisation of “Graduate Transitions” workshops that were piloted in a compulsory final-year module across a number of programmes in a higher education institutions’ business faculty to enhance graduates “work readiness”.

The collaboration and leadership thinking of industry professionals, academics and career consultants designed and co-created a workshop that enhances transitioning student resilience and prepares them for their future of work. Action research gathered data using a mixed-methods approach to evaluate student and stakeholder feedback.

Evidence indicates that the workshops actively embed practical coping strategies for resilience and mindful leaders in transitioning graduates. It assures employers that employability and professional practice competencies are experienced by transitioning graduates entering the future workplace.

Limitations to this research are clearly in the methodology and concentrating on the co-creation of an innovative curriculum design project instead of the tools to accurately evaluate the impact in a systematic manner. There was also limited time and resource to design a more sophisticated platform to collect data and analyse it with the imperative academic rigour required. Emphasis on piloting and operationalisation of the intervention, due to time and resource restrictions, also challenged the methodological design.

The positive feedback from these workshops facilitated integration into the curriculum at an institution-wide level. This paper shares with the academic community of practice, the pedagogy and active learning design that could be customised within their own institution as an intervention to positively influence the new metrics underpinning graduate outcomes.

This pioneering curriculum design ensures that employability and professional practice competencies are experienced by graduates transitioning to the workplace.