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Over the past century, office designers have adapted to changing work conditions across various industries by creating workspaces that cater to the needs of modern workers. As a result, a range of office layouts have been developed, from traditional private offices to open-plan setups. The choice of layout can significantly impact communication, social interaction and overall performance. This study aims to explore the social and mental well-being of employees working in open-plan offices in the public sector in South Africa.

The research was conducted in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa, focusing on five governmental departments. Using purposive sampling, employees working in open-plan offices were identified. A structured online interview form with open-ended questions was distributed to all selected employees between May and September 2021, resulting in 54 responses. Thematic content analysis using ATLAS.ti was used to analyze the data.

The findings suggest that while open-plan offices can enhance teamwork, communication, accessibility and inclusivity, their design can negatively affect employees’ perceptions of social and mental health in the workplace. Specifically, open-plan designs are perceived to compromise privacy, shorten attention spans, lower productivity and increase stress levels. Interestingly, absenteeism was not reported by employees in this study, which contradicts previous research and requires further investigation.

These findings can be valuable for human resource managers, facilities managers and office space designers.

This research contributes to the ongoing conversation surrounding the impact of open-plan offices on the mental and social well-being of employees in the public sector within the South African context. The contribution of this paper thus lies in the South-African context and the public sector angle plus a more in-depth insight on well-being through an extensive set of 54 interviews.

While there is research that has explored how institutions have responded to various crises, these are usually locally or regionally situated. However, no event has impacted higher education globally like COVID-19 and it will certainly alter the way top administrators lead and how institutions move forward. Thus, this chapter will explore how to better understand how presidents and top administrators navigate the (inter)national geopolitics as they move the institution forward. In addition, clear and up-to-date communication has proven to be important in battling this crisis. Thus, how presidents at national universities have communicated with students, faculty, staff, and various off-campus communities members regarding COVID-19 and how they have achieved is important to explore. Our findings suggest that presidents and top administrators need to build support to help them navigate the political roadblocks they may encounter. Findings also suggest that communication is the main role they play as leaders on their campus. On/off-campus community members see the presidents as the face of the university and key communicator as relates to communicating what the institutions is doing and how they are addressing the crisis. This chapter helps in better understanding the roles presidents and top administrators play during a global crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and its associated tools to reduce dispensing errors in an inpatient pharmacy of a teaching hospital in Thailand.

The action research methodology was used to illustrate the implementation of Lean Six Sigma through the collaboration between the researcher and participants. The project team followed the Lean Six Sigma Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC) methodology and applied its tools in various phases of the methodology.

The number of dispensing errors decreased from 6 to 2 incidents per 20,000 inpatient days per month between April 2018 and August 2019 representing a 66.66% reduction. The project has improved the dispensing process performance resulting in dispensing error reduction and improved patient safety. The communication channels between the hospital pharmacy and the pharmacy technicians have also been improved.

This study was conducted in an inpatient pharmacy of a teaching hospital in Thailand. Therefore, the findings from this study cannot be generalized beyond the specific setting. However, the findings are applicable in the case of similar contexts and/or situations.

This is the first study that employs a continuous improvement methodology for the purpose of improving the dispensing process and the quality of care in a hospital. This study contributes to an understanding of how the application of action research can save patients' lives, improve patient safety and increase work satisfaction in the pharmacy service.

This chapter provides a theoretical and empirical examination of young people’s role in identifying and solving problems in their communities from a social justice perspective. The complex political processes in South Africa stymie a top-down approach for advancing social justice. Therefore, this study focuses on a bottom-up stance to nurture social justice efforts by concentrating on the role of the youth, younger than 18 years, in initiating change in their communities. Such engagement aligns with the principles outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1989 that aims to enrich both the individual and the community (Dirsuweit & Mohamed, 2016; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1989). The University of South Africa is involved in a community outreach program of this nature, commissioned by Empowervate Trust, a South African non-profit organization that manages the Youth Citizen’s Action Campaign (Y-CAP), which equips learners with the skills to solve societal issues in their respective communities. This chapter thus attempts to clarify what active citizenship means to the youth, by focusing on the findings from focus-group interviews with South African learners who are involved with community development projects that advance social justice initiatives in their communities through the Y-CAP endeavor.

This paper aims to propose an adaptive unstructured finite volume procedure for efficient prediction of propellant feedline dynamics in fluid network.

The adaptive strategy is based on feedback control of errors defined by changes in key variables in two subsequent time steps.

As an evaluation of the proposed approach, two feedline dynamics problems are formulated and solved. First problem involves prediction of pressure surges in a pipeline that has entrapped air and the second is a conjugate heat transfer problem involving prediction of chill down of cryogenic transfer line. Numerical predictions with the adaptive strategy are compared with available experimental data and are found to be in good agreement. The adaptive strategy is found to be efficient and robust for predicting feedline dynamics in flow network at reduced CPU time.

This study uses an adaptive reduced-order network modeling approach for fluid network.

Failure to rescue events, or events involving preventable deaths from complications, are a significant contributor to inpatient mortality. While many interventions have been designed and implemented over several decades, this patient safety issue remains at the forefront of concern for most hospitals. In the first part of this study, the development and implementation of one type of highly studied and widely adopted rescue intervention, algorithm-based patient assessment tools, is examined. The analysis summarizes how a lack of systems-oriented approaches in the design and implementation of these tools has resulted in suboptimal understanding of patient risk of mortality and complications and the early recognition of patient deterioration. The gaps identified impact several critical aspects of excellent patient care, including information-sharing across care settings, support for the development of shared mental models within care teams, and access to timely and accurate patient information.

This chapter describes the use of several system-oriented design and implementation activities to establish design objectives, model clinical processes and workflows, and create an extensible information system model to maximize the benefits of patient state and risk assessment tools in the inpatient setting. A prototype based on the product of the design activities is discussed along with system-level considerations for implementation. This study also demonstrates the effectiveness and impact of applying systems design principles and practices to real-world clinical applications.

How organizations view, value and manage their place architecture in relation to identification and corporate identity has received little research attention. The main goal of this paper is to provide an integrative understanding of the relationships between corporate identity, place architecture, and identification from a multi-disciplinary approach. It is assumed that the characteristics of the organization and of the way a corporate identity and place architecture are managed will affect employees’ and consumers’ identification.

The paper uses a theory-building case study within the phenomenological/qualitative research tradition. The data were gathered through 15 in-depth interviews with top management who were working at a London-Based Business School. In addition, six focus groups were conducted with a total of 36 academics, and new empirical insights are offered. NVivo software was used to gain insight into the various influences and relationships.

Drawing on one case study, the findings confirm that firms are using the conceptualizations of corporate identity and place architecture, including the leveraging of tangible and intangible forms of consumers’/employees’ identification, toward a university business school. The insights from a single, exploratory, case study might not be generalizable.

The relationships between corporate identity, place architecture and identification have received little research attention and have hardly been studied at all from the perspective of this paper. This paper has value to researchers in the fields of marketing, corporate identity, place architecture, design, as well as professionals involved in managing a company’s architecture. Drawing on the marketing/management theory of identity and architecture alignment, managers and policy advisors should devote attention to each element of the corporate identity and place architecture and ensure that they are meaningful, as well as in dynamic alignment.