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To enhance their innovation and reputation, many organizations introduce programs that are intended to attract, retain and support diverse communities. Yet, these programs are often unsuccessful, partly because explicit references to diversity tend to evoke defensive reactions in employees from the dominant culture. To circumvent this problem, the purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that individuals tend to be more receptive to diversity whenever they experience meaning in life. Furthermore, four workplace characteristics – informational justice, a manageable workload, equality in status and a compelling vision of the future – should foster this meaning in life.

To assess these possibilities, 177 employees completed a survey that assessed workplace practices, meaning in life and openness to diversity.

The results showed that informational justice, a manageable workload and a compelling vision were positively associated with openness to other cultures, constituencies and perspectives, and these relationships were partly or wholly mediated by meaning in life.

These findings imply that leaders might be able to foster an openness to diversity, but without explicit references to this diversity, circumventing the likelihood of defensive reactions. Specifically, a program that simultaneously encourages transparent communication, diminishes workload and clarifies the vision or aspirations of the future may represent an inexpensive but powerful means to foster an openness to diversity.

The aim of this paper is to synthesise three separate but similar studies into the motivations of accountants, engineers, and nurses to come to Australia's Northern Territory. Gordon's job structures model and the labour force development implications of staples thesis are to be used to provide a view of the differences between types of jobs.

Separate surveys of accountants, engineers and nurses registered in the Northern Territory were conducted in 2006 and 2007. Similarities in design between the studies allowed comparisons to be made regarding responses to questions about motives to move to the Northern Territory. Comparisons between the job groups were made on the basis of responses to individual motives, and a principal components analysis was used to identify groups of motives.

Nurses were more likely than engineers to be motivated to work with indigenous people and by their own family and social issues. Accountants were similar to engineers with regards to working with indigenous people, and similar to nurses with regards to family and social migration motives.

Growing the professional workforce in the Northern Territory is a prominent government policy objective. This study shows that different approaches to recruitment need to be taken with workers in different professions.

One of the weaknesses in existing academic literature on recruitment and retention of professionals in rural and remote areas is a lack of studies comparing rural migration motives of labour employed in different types of jobs. This study covers those aspects of the field.

Knowledge management (KM) has become a key concern for companies which nowadays are constantly looking for better ways to assure knowledge sharing between their employees. However, companies encounter several challenges arising from the fact that several generations share the same workplace and a big portion of today's employees are close to retirement. This article aims to focus on knowledge sharing between generations.

The article reviews the “generation” concept and its limitations, and introduces a new view on generations as “communities of knowledge”.

Companies have to find ways not only to assure knowledge transfer between generations, but also knowledge retention of the workers that are retiring. This requires a deeper understanding of the generations and their differentiated knowledge. Yet, today's dominant descriptions of generations (“baby‐boomers”, “generation X”, “generation Y”), do not appear to adequately take into account cultural, socio‐professional and individual factors.

The proposed change of paradigm allows a deeper comprehension of nuances that may exist within the same age group. In doing so, the article makes a contribution to the understanding of knowledge sharing in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how capability gaps can be identified and how they can be dealt with in aircraft technology transfers in future offset deals.

The study is based on lessons learned as identified from three case studies of technology transfers from Saab, a Swedish aircraft manufacturing company to South Africa, the Czech Republic, and India.

The capability gap between sender and receiver has to be dealt with on two levels: on an organizational level; and on an individual level. It is proposed that the disseminative capacity constitutes the ability to assess the capability gap between the sender and receiver, and to convert this assessment to adaptations of the product and production process to include in an industrialization process. On the individual level, the capability-raising activities were connected to employees’ knowledge, personal development plans for the transfer of explicit knowledge, as well as on-the-job training to facilitate the exchange of tacit knowledge.

The research is based on case studies from one company. Therefore, it is necessary to confirm the proposed propositions through new case studies in other contexts as well as through survey-based research.

The paper focusses on the context of offset and reports on actual experiences from a capability perspective of technology transfers within the aircraft manufacturing area. It proposes a structured way of identifying and bridging the capability gap within such transfers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of “electronic social entrepreneurship” by integrating social entrepreneurship and information and communication technology to enhance social enterprise effectiveness. Social enterprise has recently emerged as a contemporary form of enterprise to achieve sustainable social order. Thus, besides building economic value, a primary goal of these enterprises is to create superior social value. Although, a considerable number of studies exist on social enterprise, the literature is still lacking in the discussion on electronic social entrepreneurship.

This study adopted inductive qualitative approach in which in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted from 32 owners/managers/CEOs of registered social enterprises.

The analysis of interviews by qualified researchers resulted in the identification of four key themes. These themes included information and communication technology, information and communication technology–based innovation, environmental complexity and social value creation. Frequencies of all the identified themes were calculated, and based on these themes, literature review was conducted to find out the relationships between these themes and to introduce a model of electronic social entrepreneurship.

The model developed could be used by social enterprises for achieving higher social and economic returns.

Based on interviews and literature review, a unique model for electronic social entrepreneurship is developed.