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The purpose of this paper is to present findings derived from research work carried out by a team of six university lecturers who are members of a teaching quality improvement network. The aim is to increase the motivation of the lecturers involved, so that better performance can be achieved, and the teaching‐learning process enriched.

Three complementary performance measures are used: students' active participation; lecturers' personal reflections; and lecturer peer‐to‐peer assessment.

These tools have provided the teaching staff with information about their strengths and weaknesses, as a consequence of which they have learned to deploy their skills inside the classroom and prepare their subjects more effectively. In this way, it is shown that the public teaching system can assess the potential of its human resources, and increase their motivation.

From an institutional point of view, performance quality assessment practices can also help to design training and development programmes that adapt the individual needs identified to the educational goals of today's universities.

Most studies on work–life support at workplaces consider work–life balance to be a women’s issue, either explicitly or implicitly. This chapter analyses how fathers who are involved caregivers are supported or hindered in attaining work–life balance by their workplaces. It explores the following three questions: (1) why fathers value some job adaptations over others compared with mothers; (2) how organizational cultures influence the work–life balance of new fathers and (3) what differences exist across public and private sectors as well as large versus small companies. A qualitative approach with three discussion groups and 22 involved fathers enables us to explore these issues for large companies, public sector workplaces and small businesses. We find that tight time schedules, flextime, telework, schedule control and fully paid nontransferable leaves of absence constitute policies that favor involved fatherhood, while measures without wage replacement generate fear of penalization in the workplace and do not fit the persistent relevance of the provider role. In addition, un-similar supervisors, envy, lack of understanding and gender stereotypes among co-workers and clients constitute cultural barriers at the workplace level. Contrary to our expectations, small businesses may offer a better work–life balance than large companies, while the public sector is not always as family-friendly as assumed.

This is the first article to apply a machine learning approach to the analysis of time on market on real estate markets.

The random survival forest approach is introduced to the real estate market. The most important predictors of time on market are revealed and it is analyzed how the survival probability of residential rental apartments responds to these major characteristics.

Results show that price, living area, construction year, year of listing and the distances to the next hairdresser, bakery and city center have the greatest impact on the marketing time of residential apartments. The time on market for an apartment in Munich is lowest at a price of 750 € per month, an area of 60 m2, built in 1985 and is in a range of 200–400 meters from the important amenities.

The findings might be interesting for private and institutional investors to derive real estate investment decisions and implications for portfolio management strategies and ultimately to minimize cash-flow failure.

Although machine learning algorithms have been applied frequently on the real estate market for the analysis of prices, its application for examining time on market is completely novel. This is the first paper to apply a machine learning approach to survival analysis on the real estate market.

Adolescent violence towards parents (AVTP) has damaging impacts on family relationships, however, little is known about the characteristics of the families in which it occurs. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize current knowledge of the AVTP characteristics to help to inform the development of more effective community responses.

The paper opted for a Rapid Evidence Assessment taking an ecological approach to organize current knowledge about the characteristics of both victims and perpetrators of AVTP. It synthesized 20 empirical studies identified from a systemic review of published literature.

The assessment concludes that adolescents who perpetrate AVTP typically experience high levels of comorbid mental health concerns, drug and alcohol use, anger difficulties and trauma. The victims (parents) are characterized as having strained relationships with other family members and trauma profiles.

Policy and practice responses should be tailored to systemically address needs in the identified areas. This review further illustrates the limitations of current knowledge, highlighting inconsistencies in both definitions and findings, particularly related to key characteristics.

This paper is the first of its kind to systemically search this literature and only include the most rigorously designed studies. It adds value to the developing field of AVTP by providing the scaffolding of the characteristics of families who have been impacted.

Acute and chronic pain affects more Americans than heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined. Conservative estimates suggest the total economic cost of pain in the United States is $600 billion, and more than half of this cost is due to lost productivity, such as absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover. In addition, an escalating opioid epidemic in the United States and abroad spurred by a lack of safe and effective pain management has magnified challenges to address pain in the workforce, particularly the military. Thus, it is imperative to investigate the organizational antecedents and consequences of pain and prescription opioid misuse (POM). This chapter provides a brief introduction to pain processing and the biopsychosocial model of pain, emphasizing the relationship between stress, emotional well-being, and pain in the military workforce. We review personal and organizational risk and protective factors for pain, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, optimism, perceived organizational support, and job strain. Further, we discuss the potential adverse impact of pain on organizational outcomes, the rise of POM in military personnel, and risk factors for POM in civilian and military populations. Lastly, we propose potential organizational interventions to mitigate pain and provide the future directions for work, stress, and pain research.

In recent years there has been a significant acceleration in the market growth of social impact investing. Policy makers, regulatory bodies and national decision-makers should base their decision-making processes on multiple criteria. These criteria are, by nature, imprecise, ambiguous and uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to provide decision-makers with a mathematical tool which aids them in their decision-making processes identifying the degree of appropriateness of less developed countries in terms of potential success of investment in vaccination campaigns.

In this work, the authors have developed a decision-making tool within the framework of multiple criteria decision making and Fuzzy Logic, which aims to aid decision-makers for vaccinations campaigns in less developed countries. In particular, the authors have proposed a Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution-based method which is able to work in fuzzy environment in order to assess and rank countries based on their fuzzy degree of appropriateness for impact investing in vaccines.

The impact investing market provides capital from private sources to address many pressing global challenges such as access to basic services as health. Governments have, therefore, an essential role in supporting the development of this market by improving the risk/return profile of investments through access to credit facilities, tax credits or subsidies or defining the regulation of the supply of investments, provision of technical assistance to investing private companies and co-financing. The proposed framework permits funding decision making taking into account the degree of preparedness and adequacy for impact investing in vaccines of the selected countries.

Impact investing can play a key role in the reduction of immunization gap offering suitable strategies for both, governments and private investors for the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, in order to make good financial decisions managers should take into account not only health, income, education and other social criteria but also the degree of basic preparedness of the countries in order to ensure the success of the immunization campaigns which means taking into account availability of basic infrastructures, access to electricity, political stability among other criteria.

However, in order to make good financial decisions managers should take into account not only health, income, education and other social criteria but also the degree of basic preparedness of the countries in order to ensure the success of the immunization campaigns which means taking into account availability of basic infrastructures, access to electricity, political stability among other criteria.

The proposed model will allow public and private decision makers to make better investment decisions in terms of effectiveness as the provided ranking of countries candidates for the investments is more realistic and takes into account more decision dimensions.

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies embrace and enable interactions with external entities. Firms pursuing these approaches conduct business and interact with environments differently than those pursuing traditional closed strategies. This chapter considers these strategies together highlighting similarities and differences between platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies. We focus on managerial and organizational challenges for organizations pursuing these strategies and identify four institutional logic shifts associated with these strategic transitions: (1) increasing external focus, (2) moving to greater openness, (3) focusing on enabling interactions, and (4) adopting interaction-centric metrics. As mature incumbent organizations adopt these strategies, there may be tensions and multiple conflicting institutional logics. Additionally, we consider four strategic leadership topics and how they relate to platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies: (1) executive orientation and experience, (2) top management teams, (3) board-management relations, and (4) executive compensation. We discuss theoretical implications, and consider future directions and research opportunities.

This work examines the intersection between traditional human resource management and the novel employment arrangements of the expanding gig economy. While there is a substantial multidisciplinary literature on the digital platform labor phenomenon, it has been largely centered on the experiences of gig workers. As digital labor platforms continue to grow and specialize, more managers, executives, and human resource practitioners will need to make decisions about whether and how to utilize gig workers. Here the authors explore and interrogate the unique features of human resource management (HRM) activities in the context of digital labor platforms. The authors discuss challenges and opportunities regarding (1) HRM in organizations that outsource labor needs to external labor platforms, (2) HRM functions within digital labor platform firms, and (3) HRM policies and practices for organizations that develop their own spin-off digital labor platform. To foster a more nuanced understanding of work in the gig economy, the authors identify common themes across these contexts, highlight knowledge gaps, offer recommendations for future research, and outline pathways for collecting empirical data on HRM in the gig economy.

The pandemic has enhanced the global phenomenon of disinformation. This paper aims to study the false news concerning COVID-19, spread through social media in Spain, by using the LatamChequea database for a duration from 01/22/2020, when the first false information has been detected, up to 03/09/2021.

A quantitative analysis has been conducted with regard to the correlation between fake news stories and the pandemic state, the motive to share them, their dissemination in other countries and the effectiveness of fact checking. This study is complemented by a qualitative method: a focus group conducted with representatives of different groups within the society.

Fake news has been primarily disseminated through several social networks at the same time, with two peaks taking place in over a half of the said false stories. The first took place from March to April of 2020 during complete lockdown, and we were informed of prevention measures, the country’s situation and the origin of the virus, whereas the second was related to news revolving around the coming vaccines, which occurred between October and November. The audience tends to neither cross-check the information received nor report fake news to competent authorities, and fact-checking methods fail to stop their spread. Further awareness and digital literacy campaigns are thus required in addition to more involvement from governments and technological platforms.

The main limitation of the research is the fact that it was only possible to conduct a focus group of five individuals who do not belong to generation Z due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, although a clear contribution to the analysis of the impact of fake news on social networks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain can be seen from the privileged experiences in each of the fields of work that were identified. In this sense, the results of the study are not generalizable to a larger population. On the other hand, and with a view to future research, it would be advisable to carry out a more specific study of how fake news affects generation Z.

This research is original in nature, and the findings of this study are valuable for business practitioners and scholars, brand marketers, social media platform owners, opinion leaders and policymakers.

With the advent of technology and science, the business environment will keep changing very fast. Today, Information Technology (IT) is used in almost all business applications. The most important improvements are being realized at the management side since IT is fully supporting decision-making processes now. Human Resources Management (HRM) is being affected by IT such as web-based technologies and intelligent systems and these systems make HRM much more effective. Today’s HRM-related software do not deal with just payrolls, they also include recruiting and record-keeping, training and performance appraisal which have transitioned HRM from task-oriented to people-oriented. Today, Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) and electronic HRM (e-HRM) are being utilized by many organizations all over the world and play a strategic role in decision-making processes for effective and efficient HRM. This study investigates the recent literature on HRIS, e-HRM and Decision Support Systems in HRM to identify the improvements and debates on contemporary Human Resources Management.