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The purpose of this study is to reveal and analyse dominant learning processes in emergency response work from the fire‐fighters' point of view, and how fire‐fighters develop their competence.

This study adopted an explorative approach using participant observation. The objective of this open‐minded approach was to discover how, when and where learning took place.

There are several areas for learning that contribute to fire‐fighters' development of competence: training, exercises, responses to incidents, storytelling, discussions, lectures, courses, introduction of new technology/knowledge and reading of articles/literature. However, learning to act appropriately in emergency situations is mainly a result of the embodiment of skills and knowledge (getting the feel of it, or “getting it in the finger” as the Norwegian idiom puts it), personal experience and interpersonal sharing of stories.

The study concludes that learning amongst fire‐fighters follows a process of legitimate peripheral participation, as well as learning being a personal development for the individual fire‐fighter. A combination of a socio‐cultural approach to learning and an individual cognitive approach is thus needed to fully understand learning processes.

Learning can be improved by actors becoming more reflexive practitioners, where responses are critically evaluated and established knowledge and practice are questioned. Efforts to improve learning amongst fire‐fighters should accordingly include systematic sharing of experiences and development of more challenging exercises which will help to enhance bodily experience of new knowledge.

This study extends current understanding of learning and competence development in emergency work. It presents essential learning activities, in addition to the dominant learning mechanism in personal development. The study clarifies the potential for learning through planned learning processes as opposed to the contribution from informal, ad hoc, socio‐cultural means of learning.

This paper aims to study the influence of project managers’ signature strengths on project team resilience.

The authors performed a qualitative multiple case study design to explore the research question. Open-ended interviews, site visits, observations and documents were the data sources. The authors used character strengths and virtues within positive psychology as a theoretical framework in the data analysis.

The main finding of this study is that the project manager’s use of signature strengths influences the resilience of the project team. The cross-case analysis revealed four signature strengths – leadership, open-mindedness, persistence and hope – that influenced team resilience in all three studied cases.

Future research should investigate other organizations, types of projects and countries so that the findings may be generalized.

This paper provides managers and teams with useful insights on signature strengths and team resilience. The findings stress the importance of managers being aware of their signature strengths and knowing how to use them. As the working situation today is often more complex, uncertain and difficult than ever, it is important to have resilient managers and teams.

This study contributes to increased knowledge on signature strengths and team resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to examine advertising placed within Kai Tiaki: The Journal of Nurses of New Zealand. The periodization for this study is 1908-1929, a chronological time span and approach that incorporates the first issue of the Kai Tiaki in 1908 and ending 1929, thus representing the launch of the journal and first two decades of its production. During this period, New Zealand nursing was emerging as an organised and professionalised body of health-care workers. At the same time, New Zealand, Britain’s most distant “dominion”, was beginning to realise its own nationhood and growth.

The primary source of data was digitalised Kai Tiaki issues between 1908 and 1929. Each four issues for every year were analysed. All advertisements were coded (n = 1895), followed by a qualitative content analysis in which key themes were derived.

Five overarching themes were found. The two main themes were the proliferation of therapeutic “tonics” and the second the relationship of nurses to them that was profiled by advertisers. The three remaining themes were accommodations, lifestyle and the nurses “role” as nurse, handmaiden or mother. Conclusions discuss reasons for key findings, and, in particular, the reinforcement of the traditional nursing role, which was often at odds with the increased technological roles and responsibilities nurses were undertaking. In turn, advertisers saw the nursing profession as a new and potentially lucrative market of women with disposable income and influence in the health field.

To date, there is a scarcity of marketing analysis that examines advertising placed in trade journals and in particular for early twentieth century health-care professionals. Through a lens of advertising analysis, this study investigates the advertising nursing readership of the day was exposed to and the motives and tactics used by those interested in expanding both health-care worker and consumer markets through a singular strategy.

In the context of intense intercultural experience, the individual’s identity is often transformed by the forces of acculturation. Unexpectedly powerful demands, influences, and resistances buffet the values, beliefs, and behaviors of the sojourner, leading to confusion, and eventually resolution of profound identity issues. The resulting sense of being between two cultures or more, living at the edges of each, but rarely at the center, can be called cultural marginality. When these issues remain unresolved, the person is often confounded by the demands, and feels alienated in a state called encapsulated marginality. The constructive marginal resolves these questions by integrating choices from each culture of which the person is a part, choosing the appropriate frame of reference, and taking action appropriate for the context.

Global leaders need to recognize the characteristics of the marginal identity and leverage the skills the marginal brings to the organization. The mindset of hybrid professionals fosters increased creativity, culturally appropriate problem solving, and collaboration with other culture partners. Educators, trainers, and coaches can design developmental opportunities for sojourners to acculturate to new environments in a way that potentiates their intercultural competence and comfort with their bicultural mindset. By viewing a complex cultural identity as an asset to the organization, global leaders can avoid the common pitfall of overlooking cultural marginals and instead maximize their contribution to globalization.

Most complex engineering projects encounter unexpected events through their life cycle. These are traditionally attributed to inaccurate foresight and poor planning. Outlining a nonanticipatory alternate, the authors seek to explain the ability to rebound from unexpected events, without foresight, using resilient systems theory. This paper seeks to outline the theoretical underpinnings of project resilience and to identify criteria for planning and selecting projects for greater resilience.

Investigating project resilience, this paper studies the relationship between unexpected events and project performance in 21 projects. The authors perform a systematic review of project ex post evaluations 3–12 years after project completion.

First, the authors find that all projects encountered unexpected events, even when discounting planning error. Second, the authors show that, as a consequence, projects underperformed, not necessarily relative to formal criteria, but in terms of subjective opportunity cost, that is, relative to competing alternates – known or imagined – foregone by their implementation. Finally, the authors identify four types of resilient projects – superior, equivalent, compensatory and convertible projects – as opportunities for building project resilience.

The properties of resilient projects provide opportunities for building resilience in complex projects.

Departing from traditional efforts to “de risk” plans and “de-bias” planners, this paper focuses on the properties of projects themselves, as an alternate to improved foresight and up-front planning.