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This paper aims to describe how lean performance improvement principles helped transform an integrated healthcare system’s talent acquisition team to best in class.

Spectrum Health’s talent acquisition team is needed to change its functional processes to better achieve its recruitment goals. In 2013, the system’s talent acquisition and process improvement teams partnered to conduct a value stream analysis, followed by five rapid improvement events and project work. Structural and institutional changes were defined and implemented. Significant cultural change toward a philosophy of continuous improvement was accomplished through the use of managing for daily improvement huddles and other efforts. The focus throughout was on lean thinking, change management and achieving meaningful results.

After the lean process implementation, time to fill for open positions was reduced by 10 per cent. The offer acceptance rate increased from 96 to 99.6 per cent, with fewer than 25 turndowns annually. Customer and candidate satisfaction has been maintained at above 90 per cent and operating in a culture of continuous improvement has spawned several additional benefits.

Lean principles applied within human resources functions can drive significant business results.

The construction and operation of buildings is a major contributor to global energy demand, greenhouse gases emissions, resource depletion, waste generation, and associated environmental effects, such as climate change, pollution and habitat destruction. Despite its wide relevance, research on building-related environmental effects often fails to achieve global visibility and attention, particularly in premiere interdisciplinary journals – thus representing a major gap in the research these journals offer. In this article we review and reflect on the factors that are likely causing this lack of visibility for such a prominent research topic and emphasise the need to reconcile the construction and operational phases into the physical unity of a building, to contribute to the global environmental discourse using a lifecycle-based approach. This article also aims to act as a call for action and to raise awareness of this important gap. The evidence contained in the article can support institutional policies to improve the status quo and provide a practical help to researchers in the field to bring their work to wide interdisciplinary audiences.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that historical research methods offer an innovative and powerful way to examine, frame, explain, and disrupt the study of contemporary issues in educational leadership. More specifically, the authors examine how historical methodology might recast some of the questions educational leadership researchers presently engage and how the act of “doing history” might simultaneously lead to new research agendas and social change.

This conceptual paper provides a discussion of the explanatory and disruptive power of historical research methods and how intentional ignorance of uncomfortable historical realities, such as racist institutional structures and practices, undermines present-day efforts to advance equity in schools. Using the mainstream achievement gap narrative as an example, the authors consider the ways in which historical scholarship can effectively disrupt current conceptions of educational inequality and opportunity in the USA.

The paper suggests researchers close the “history gap” by engaging historical research methods in ways that better ground, contextualize, and disrupt the often ahistorical and uncritical ways the field frames present-day challenges like the achievement gap.

This paper explores the explanatory and disruptive power of historical research as a mode of inquiry in education leadership.

The emergence of diversity in organizations is typically traced to the 1960s when legislation was enacted in the USA to prohibit discrimination against ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, and religion. However, Peter Drucker found that workplace diversity had its origin in the aftermath of World War I. In response, this paper aims to address the historical evolution of workplace diversity through the lens of Drucker.

The paper traces the historical evolution of Drucker's perspective on workplace diversity and the circumstances that catapulted him to advocate for understanding and valuing diversity in organizations. Further, it uses passages from Peter Drucker's published accounts to illustrate his understanding of demographic trends and how these trends impacted the competitiveness of the organization and management of workplace diversity.

Drucker's early life experiences influenced him to become a tenacious advocate for workplace diversity. As a reflection of these experiences, Drucker's understanding of human resource management led him to implore his readers to use human resource practices to leverage the power of evolving demographic trends. Drucker later refined his prescriptions on workplace diversity by incorporating several assumptions from the strategic human resource management literature into his research.

Future workplace diversity research would benefit from evaluating Drucker's propositions on leveraging the power of demographic trends through human resource management practices.

This historical analysis of Drucker's vast body of research provides substantial insight into his practical arguments for understanding and valuing diversity in organizations. To the best of one's knowledge, organizational researchers and management historians have not extensively evaluated Drucker's contributions to the workplace diversity literature.

This study aims to identify the marginal impact of introducing a signal attribute of pasture-raised beef on consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for other independent attributes.

The study is divided into two steps. The first, qualitative, consisted of investigating the values consumers have regarding beef production. To this end, 52 interviews with Brazilian and US consumers were conducted using laddering. In the second, quantitative, six experiments, (face to face and online) with 267 consumers of beef were performed.

As a result, the main value found for the Brazilians was security, while for the Americans was self-direction. For consumers, the WTP for animal welfare was the most important in the choice experiments where this information was present.

These findings offer an alternate beef differentiation, enabling it to be sold with higher added value by integrating these.

This study explores the utilization of simulation tools for building performance assessments among design professionals in Ghana.

A quantitative approach was used to obtain responses from 104 design professionals in Ghana through a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was generated through a critical review of the related literature on the subject matter. Data from respondents were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results from the analysis indicated that design professionals in Ghana possessed a low level of awareness of the simulation tools used for building performance assessments. Subsequently, the findings also revealed that the design professionals' level of usage of the simulation tools was low.

Practically, the establishment of this study informs design stakeholders, educational institutions and researchers in Ghana. For design professionals, these findings will focus on enhancing their use of simulation tools for evaluating building performance in Ghana. For educational institutions, these findings will enable them to implement the necessary strategies for incorporating the concept of building performance simulation into their curriculum in order to boost awareness and utilization. Finally, researchers will also use the study's findings to identify any research gaps for future studies.

The findings from this study pioneer knowledge on an under-investigated topic within the Ghanaian construction industry. It also provides insight into the developing state-of-the-art technology employed in the built environment.

While most efforts to combat climate change are focussed on energy efficiency and substitution of fossil fuels, growth in the built environment remains largely unquestioned. Given the current climate emergency and increasing scarcity of global resources, it is imperative that we address this “blind spot” by finding ways to support required services with less resource consumption.

There is now long overdue recognition to greenhouse gas emissions “embodied” in the production of building materials and construction, and its importance in reaching targets of net zero carbon by 2050. However, there is a widespread belief that we can continue to “build big”, provided we incorporate energy saving measures and select “low carbon materials” – ignoring the fact that excessive volume and area of buildings may outweigh any carbon savings. This is especially the case with commercial real estate.

As the inception and planning phases of projects offer most potential for reduction in both operational and embodied carbon, we must turn our attention to previously overlooked options such as “build nothing” or “build less”. This involves challenging the root cause of the need, exploring alternative approaches to meet desired outcomes, and maximising the use of existing assets. If new build is required, this should be designed for adaptability, with increased stewardship, so the building stock of the future will be a more valuable and useable resource.

This points to the need for increased understanding and application of the principles of strategic asset management, hitherto largely ignored in sustainability circles, which emphasize a close alignment of assets with the services they support.

Arguably, as the built environment consumes more material resources and energy than any other sector, its future configuration may be critical to the future of people and the planet. In this regard, this paper seeks to break new ground for deeper exploration.

The consumption of organic wine has witnessed exponential growth, mainly because of changing lifestyles, rising disposable income, modernity aspects and claimed health benefits. Understanding the motivations and attributes affecting organic wine consumption (OWC) provides a limited perspective on consumption and behavioral patterns.

This study used a set of screening criteria to arrive at the final choice of fine-dining restaurants and bars that serve wine in their outlets. Based on the selected locations, we gathered responses from 558 consumers aged 18 years and above with prior experience of buying organic and non-organic wine. The hypothesized model was validated using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM). From the perspective of organic wine consumption, the research findings exhibit significant links between the drivers.

The findings underscore the moderating impact of ethnocentrism toward shaping consumers’ attitudes and brand love. Additionally, gender and consumption frequency indicated significant variations among consumers of organic wine. Female consumers strongly believe that consumption of organic wine provides health benefits, societal acceptance and moments of joy. Additionally, men usually associate wine consumption with enhanced their affective, convivial and sensory pleasure.

This study examines the drivers and marketing outcomes of organic wine consumption using Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT) and the Theory of Hedonic Asymmetry (THA).