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The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting employees’ overall acceptance, satisfaction and future use of e-learning, specifically exploring the impact that age has on the intended future use of e-learning relative to the other potential predictors.

The project developed an online survey and invited employees of one Australian rail organisation to participate. Questions were structured around the factors that affect acceptance and future use of e-learning. Statistical analysis was used.

The findings from the study suggest that, despite the often espoused stereotype, age is not a significant factor impacting either future use intentions or satisfaction with e-learning. In contrast, three variables were found to be useful predictors of intention for future use of organisational e-learning; low complexity, authenticity and technical support.

The study did not consider other moderating effects related to demographic data other than age, such as educational experience. Further, the case presented is a single organisation and therefore is not necessarily representative of other industries. Future studies should adopt a mixed methods approach.

This study has emphasised that attention needs to be focussed on factors over which organisations have control when adopting and using e-learning. Employee age should not be seen as an obstacle to e-learning implementation, rather attention needs to turn to effective and user-friendly e-learning interventions along with sufficient technology support.

Perceptions within industry and indeed in some literature, suggest that employee age stereotypes still exist in relation to technology uptake. This research has demonstrated that this stereotype is an erroneous assumption and emphasised the importance of other factors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide description and analysis of how a traditional industry is currently using e‐learning, and to identify how the potential of e‐learning can be realised whilst acknowledging the technological divide between younger and older workers.

An exploratory qualitative methodology was employed to analyse three key questions: How is the Australian rail industry currently using e‐learning? Are there age‐related issues with the current use of e‐learning in the rail industry? How could e‐learning be used in future to engage different generations of learners in the rail industry? Data were collected in five case organisations from across the Australian rail industry.

Of the rail organisations interviewed, none believed they were using e‐learning to its full potential. The younger, more technologically literate employees are not having their expectations met and therefore retention of younger workers has become an issue. The challenge for learning and development practitioners is balancing the preferences of an aging workforce with these younger, more “technology‐savvy”, learners and the findings highlight some potential ways to begin addressing this balance.

The findings identified the potential for organisations (even those in a traditional industry such as rail) to better utilise e‐learning to attract and retain younger workers but also warns against making assumptions about technological competency based on age.

Data were gathered across an industry, and thus this paper takes an industry approach to considering the potential age‐related issues with e‐learning and the ways it may be used to meet the needs of different generations in the workplace.

The paper aims to disseminate solutions to common problems in student evaluation processes. It proposes that student evaluation can be applied to quality assurance and improving learning and teaching. The paper presents solutions in the areas of: presenting outcomes as performance indicators, constructing appropriate surveys, improving response rates, reporting student feedback to students and student engagement as a feature of university quality assurance.

The research approach of this paper is comparative case study, allowing in-depth exploration of multiple perspectives and practices at seven Australian universities. Process and outcome data were rigorously collected, analysed, compared and contrasted.

The paper provides empirical evidence for student evaluation as an instrument of learning and teaching data analysis for quality improvement. It suggests that collecting data about student engagement and the student experience will yield more useful data about student learning. Furthermore, findings indicate that students benefit from more authentic inclusion in the evaluation process and outcomes.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further and apply to their own university contexts.

The paper includes recommendations at the institution- and sector-wide levels to effectively use student evaluation as a university performance indicator and as a tool of change.

This paper fulfils an identified need to examine student evaluation processes across institutions and focuses on the role of student evaluation in quality assurance.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Age is widely regarded as a significant barrier to technology adoption. Older employees are negatively stereotyped as lacking the necessary motivation and capabilities needed to embrace things such as e-learning. However, evidence suggests that perceived complexity, learning authenticity, and availability of technical support could be more influential than age when it comes to acceptance of such technologies and future intention to use them. Scope, therefore, exists to increase engagement with e-learning among older workers if organizations address concerns associated with these factors.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Knowledge search is considered a broad concept and semi-intentional behavior. The path and boundary conditions through which search strategies affect intra-organizational knowledge creation remain elusive. Drawing on recombinant search theory and knowledge-based view, the authors seek to identify knowledge complexity as an important intermediate variable between knowledge search and innovation performance, such as research and development (R&D) output and R&D output quality. A second goal of this study is to examine the moderating roles of government support and technological turbulence.

The authors employed a longitudinal panel of 609 global pharmaceutical firms and obtained the firms' patent records from 1980 to 2015 for the analysis. The authors used generalized estimating equations (GEE) to evaluate the models and tested the consistency via panel fixed-effects estimations.

The authors' findings show that organizational routine-guided search has a negative effect on knowledge complexity, while routine-changing search exerts a positive impact on knowledge complexity. Governmental support and technological turbulence moderate these relationships. Notably, knowledge complexity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation performance.

The authors' research context, the pharmaceutical industry, may constrain the generalizability of our findings. In addition, potential types of routine-guided and routine-changing search behaviors were not considered.

Despite these limitations, this study offers important implications. First, knowledge complexity transmits the effects of knowledge search on innovation performance. Practitioners should balance routine-guided and routine-changing search processes to build and manage complex knowledge. Second, a moderate level of knowledge complexity is the key to good R&D output and R&D output quality.

The study identifies knowledge complexity as one important intermediate variable between knowledge search behaviors and intra-organizational knowledge creation.

Corporations are increasingly expected to act responsibly. The purpose of this paper is to examine two types of corporate responses to these expectations: overt and covert responses. Specifically, it examines oil companies’ involvement in multi-stakeholder initiatives and sponsorships (overt responses) and their monitoring of critics, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activist organisations (covert responses).

Theoretically, the paper draws on theories of visibility and post-political regulation. Empirically, it focuses on case studies of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Shell and BP, drawing on qualitative methods.

The paper demonstrates that overt responses create an impression of consensus between antagonistic interests and that covert responses support this impression by containing deep-seated conflicts.

Corporate responses have implications for the role of the corporation as a (post-)political actor. By containing antagonism and creating an impression of consensus, the interplay between overt and covert responses open up further possibilities for the proliferation of soft governance and self-regulation through participation in voluntary transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Data on covert practices of corporations are difficult to access. This impedes possibilities for fully assessing their extent. The findings of this paper support trends emerging from recent research on covert corporate intelligence practices, but more research is needed to provide a systematic overview.

The paper contributes to the understudied area of covert corporate activity in research on the political role of multinational corporations.

Although research on how the downstream calculations of a patent’s profit potential influence invention renewal decisions is extensive, the impact of the upstream knowledge creation stages is overlooked. The purpose of this study is to address this theoretical vacuum by examining the intra-organizational configuration of knowledge networks and collaboration networks.

The data consist of 491 global pharmaceutical firms that patent in the USA. Drawing on patent records, the authors simultaneously construct intra-organizational knowledge networks and collaboration networks and identify network cohesion features (i.e. local and global). The authors employ panel fixed-effects models to test the hypotheses.

The results show that local knowledge cohesion and local social cohesion decrease invention renewals, while global knowledge cohesion and global social cohesion increase renewals. Moreover, the marginal effects of local and global social cohesion are stronger than those of local and global knowledge cohesion, respectively.

The hypotheses are tested using the pharmaceutical industry as a research setting, which limits the generalizability of our findings. In addition, potential formal and informal contingencies are not considered.

Despite its limitations, this study provides valuable implications. First, managers are cautioned against the adverse effects of local cohesion structures on invention renewal. Second, firms can dynamically adjust their local and global network configuration strategies to harmonize the generation of valuable inventions and the retention of good ideas.

Complementary to previous research that focused on inventions’ performance feedback, this study delves into upstream knowledge creation stages to understand invention renewals.

Perinatal mental health (PMH) is acknowledged as a significant public health issue associated with significant personal, family, social and economic burden. Research demonstrates that healthcare practitioners lack knowledge and confidence in this area but there is likely to be a complexity of factors that may influence practitioner behaviours, including negative attitudes towards people with mental health and inaccurate illness perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Perinatal Illness Perceptions Scale (PIPS), a conceptual derivation of the Illness Perception Questionnaire – Revised.

A cross-sectional and exploratory instrument development design, using exploratory factor analysis, was employed.

The scale demonstrated good psychometric properties revealing three sub-scales: causes, consequences (mother); consequences (baby).

The findings implicate the PIPS as the first robust psychometric measure, which can be used to in the assessment of practitioner knowledge of the causes and consequences of PMH. The PIPS could offer the opportunity to assess these domains within both educational and training context and identify practitioner attitudes which may affect clinical decision making and referral decisions.