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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation of subordinate proactive personality with subjective evaluations of career success by direct supervisors, as well as conceptualize the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) as a mediator and power distance orientation as a moderator for understanding this relation.

Data were collected using a two-wave survey research design. Participants were drawn from 360 supervisor-subordinate dyads from mainland China. Hierarchical regression analyses, Edwards and Lambert’s (2007) moderated path analysis approach, and Preacher et al.’s (2010) Monte Carlo simulation procedure were used to test the hypothesized relationships.

LMX mediated the positive relationship between proactive personality and career success. Both the relationship between LMX and career success and the indirect relationship between proactive personality and career success were stronger when power distance orientation was lower.

This study contributes to the authors’ understanding of how and when proactive personality facilitates employee career success in the era of the boundaryless career. However, all data were collected within a single organization, which limits the observed variability and decreases external validity.

Training employees to facilitate initiative in the workplace may build and maintain better and stronger relationships with their supervisors. To enhance person-organization fit, organizations should recruit and hire employees with lower levels of power distance orientation.

This study provides solid evidence that the extent to which LMX mediates the relationship between proactive personality and career success depends on power distance orientation. It represents a promising new direction for the proactive personality and career success literatures.

The information technology (IT) outsourcing (ITO) decision is a key issue in strategic and operational management and is considered a main critical factor influencing successful organizational performance and technology assessment. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework combining value-focused thinking (VFT) methodology and the FITradeoff method to support decisions regarding ITO.

This study answers the following questions: How to identify, in a structured way, the objectives that should be considered in an ITO decision process in a changing environment? How to identify new IT services to be outsourced from the established objectives? The VFT method is recommended in this case to structure and model the problem. Moreover, the FITradeoff multicriteria method was considered in this study to support the evaluation and prioritization of IT services in an ITO decision

The framework provides promising results for ITO decisions. This study revealed that a lack of strategic and fundamental objectives is a critical issue in making ITO decisions. Although the VFT methodology is subjective in nature, it promotes a better understanding of goals and values, and FITradeoff allows the decision-maker to make comparisons of consequences based on his/her preferences.

The recommendations of the study are restricted to the case study and cannot be generalized. In addition, applying the method requires attention in determining the criteria used for outsourcing IT.

The strategic analysis of ITO provides a holistic view of the current situation since (i) the VFT methodology enables the IT manager to generate new alternatives to assist future decisions and (ii) FITradeoff has been demonstrated as a suitable option to evaluate ITO decisions.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to utilize a problem structuring method (VFT) to identify criteria and alternatives based on the organizational values and objectives. This is integrated with a multicriteria method that uses partial information and may consequently lead to fewer inconsistencies (FITradeoff) in the context of ITO.

Public private partnerships (PPPs) face challenges in implementation and operation, and need efforts to improve their performance. The purpose of this paper is to review the PPP literature quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to establish challenge themes and set research directions.

More than 4,000 papers published between 2008 and 2017 were retrieved. From this collection, papers from five major international journals were selected to explore extant PPP research findings under six main PPP challenges including: challenges related to financial management, concession period and price determination, operational phase, risk management, PPP project procurement and stakeholder management (SM). Initially, the papers were categorised quantitatively into the identified challenges and subsequently the articles were qualitatively analysed and discussed.

Poor SM, the complexity of risk management models, project delivery time and cost overruns, inadequate consideration of whole life-cycle aspects and over-reliance on a Public Sector Comparator for evaluating PPPs are found to be the most commonly encountered issues. These all warrant more extensive attention and innovative solutions.

PPP projects have faced many challenges in practice and also existing research findings have limited application in practice. Challenges highlighted in this research can be a focus area in practice to improve the performance of PPPs.

No previous reviews have explored the challenges relating to PPP projects and how they can then addressed by further studies in the field. This review is intended to address that gap, and should help to shed light on further research directions to address the emerging challenges in PPP procurement.

Introduction: As internet and communication technologies are getting developed, the commercial transaction is becoming more electronic. This change also brings new approaches to new payment mechanisms like emergence of crypto currencies. They are virtual and digital currencies which can only be used in electronic environment but they are increasingly treated as a new payment and investment tool. Nevertheless, their use has not spread into the general public, yet. At this point, it will better to take the complex nature of the crypto currencies into consideration because it may still lead to some risks for people and the type of the risks perceived by consumers may influence their attitudes toward and intention to use crypto currencies.

Aim: Accordingly, this study attempts to examine the interaction between perceived risk, attitudes toward and intention to use crypto currencies within the context of Bitcoin, as the first crypto currency.

Method: This study was designed as a causal research. The sample of the study was reached by using convenience sampling method and data were collected with survey. The compiled data were tested with Structural Equation Model.

Findings: A statistically significant and negative relationship was found between perceived financial, time and psychological risk and attitudes toward the use of Bitcoin, and a statistically significant and positive relationship was found between attitudes toward and intention to use Bitcoin. The findings of the study are expected to contribute to both relevant literature and practice by explaining the financial behavior of the individuals within the context of perceived risk theory.

The workplace offers an ideal setting for facilitating physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviours. Understanding employees’ current health behaviours is required to inform appropriate, tailored, health promotion interventions. The purpose of this paper is to compare the physical activity and sedentary behaviours over 12 months of employees within and across five UK organisations. The paper also explores the association of these health behaviours with objective and self-reported health outcomes; and investigates the association between physical activity and sedentary behaviours.

Self-reported physical activity and sedentary behaviours were recorded at four time points (baseline, three, six, 12 months). BMI, per cent body fat, waist circumference, blood pressure and resting heart rate were collected in health checks (baseline, 12 months). Well-being and health were collected via questionnaire.

Low physical activity and high sedentariness were evident. Sitting levels varied by occupational role and organisation. More activity was associated with improved health outcomes; no association was evident for sedentary behaviour. No direct effects of occupational role or organisation on health outcomes emerged after accounting for physical activity/sedentary behaviours. Physical activity and sedentary levels were weakly associated.

The low activity levels are of particular concern as linked to health outcomes for this sample. The weak association between behaviours suggests worksite interventions should target both behaviours.

This study provides insight into both the physical activity and sedentary behaviours of employees of large UK employers across different occupational sectors over 12 months; importantly it is informed by the most recent guidance for these health behaviours.

There has been considerable interest in worksite health programmes to improve employee health and productivity with programme effectiveness possibly influenced by employment category and gender. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current quality of life (QOL), physical activity (PA) levels, sitting times, and barriers/motivators to undertaking PA between academic and professional, and male and female staff within a university workplace.

Participants (105 males, 192 females, n=297) employed as full-time staff of a regional university completed an online survey with differences between staff categories (academic vs professional) and genders identified via ANCOVA using sitting time and working hours as covariates. Relationships between variables were assessed using Spearman's Rank correlations.

Academic and male staff reported greater working hours (∼7-25 per cent, p<0.05) but similar QOL, seven-day total PA (∼3,600 MET-minutes per week) and sitting times (∼6-7 hours per day) compared to professional and female staff. The most common barriers for PA were lack of time or energy, with motivators including to feel good or improve health. Male staff reported these less frequently compared to females (∼13-25 per cent, p<0.05). Significant correlations between working hours and QOL (=−0.157 to −0.220, p<0.05), sitting time and QOL (=−0.195 to 0.171, p<0.05), and PA levels and QOL (=0.141-0.192, p<0.05) were identified for all staff.

The current study has demonstrated significant employment and gender differences in working hours with staff exhibiting similar QOL, PA and sitting levels. Gender differences in working hours, and PA barriers/motivators may provide important foci for the development of worksite health programmes to improve staff health and well-being.

Implicating myself in Métis scholar Natalie Clark's question “who are you and why do you care?” (2016, p. 48), this chapter traces the theorization of love in the Human Services, with a focus on the field of Child and Youth Care. I explore love as an ethical, political, and necessary force in times of ongoing colonial and state violence against Indigenous and racialized peoples (Ferguson & Toye, 2017). I go on to highlight my graduate research as a Child and Youth Care Masters student and educator, grappling with my own settler identity as a diasporic, queer, ciswoman of color, and questioning my complicity as a settler body on stolen Indigenous lands. The chapter includes vital knowledge from my research with Sisters Rising, an Indigenous-led, community-based, participatory study that uses arts-and-land-based ways of knowing to honor and uphold stories, art, and knowledge from Indigenous and racialized young peoples and communities. By tracing the reflections on decolonial love shared through Sisters Rising, I consider ways that racialized settler practitioners might engage a decolonial love ethic in praxis. Calling upon critical feminist, Indigenous, and postcolonial scholarship and brilliance, this chapter invites other settler practitioners, specifically those who identify as racialized or people of color to reckon with the intricacies of our collective complicity in notions of settler purity and apolitical practice (Shotwell, 2016). Throughout the chapter, I highlight conceptual approaches for loving politicized praxis rooted in movements toward social justice, Indigenous sovereignty-building, and decolonization.

This Chapter provides an overview of the field of digital humanities and examines the arguments that are helping to shape it in a variety of ways. This chapter explores the unique difference in perspective between the “code” as the basis of understanding the humanities in general and digital humanities more specifically and the focus of pedagogues, who believe that it is indeed the examination and expression of the humanities that help shape the code, thus giving the code meaning. There are also those who focus more on research within the field and are not conversant on how various tools work but instead why they are chosen in the first place. This chapter also explores how the work of students, as user of that which we in the field code, teach and research, impacts the discipline.