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The purpose of this paper is to define a new methodology for designing corporate learning for a global audience and to provide a case study of that methodology in action. The Global Learning Archetypes approach adapts well-established cultural preference models and combines them with insightful learning models. The result is three primary Global Learning Archetypes and six secondary archetypes that allow training to be designed once and used around the world.

The Global Learning Archetype approach was created by evaluating well-established global cultural preferences models, integrating them with a proprietary learning criteria model, and developing a model for rapidly and cost-effectively creating learning for multiple geographies. Additionally, a case study illustrates both the challenges and successes when implementing this model in a large global corporation.

Most organizations create global learning either by creating content in their “home” location and then adapting it for other locations, or by distributing a single version of content and trusting local facilitators to provide context for it. The first method is expensive and time-consuming; the second method is risky and unreliable. The Global Archetype method provides for creating learning interactions that are appropriate for multiple geographies in a single effort.

Most large organizations are global, and smaller organizations increasingly have a global footprint. According to Fortune Magazine, the Fortune Global 500 are headquartered in 37 different countries and do business in over 150 different countries. An Institute for the Future/Intuit study notes that by 2018, half of all US small businesses will be involved in international trade. CSA Research observes that businesses spend about US$31 billion a year on localization. A method for providing global learning in both an impactful and cost-effective way is clearly necessary.

The Global Learning Archetypes method is comparatively new, but it draws from well-established and well-vetted content on worldwide cultural preferences and on effective learning criteria. As such, it is a valuable synthesis of the proven and the innovative. Far more than a conceptual model, the Global Archetypes have been used by some of the largest organizations in the world; a case study of one such implementation is provided in this paper.

Attachment to place is a positive emotional bond that develops between individuals and their environment (Hunter, 1978; Altman & Low, 1992). It is a state of psychological well-being experienced as a result of the accessibility of place, or conversely a state of distress set up by the remoteness of place (Giuliani, 1991). This attachment is important because it generates identification with place and fosters social and political involvement in the preservation of the physical and social features that characterize a neighborhood. In fact, a number of studies have shown that the stronger the neighborhood attachment, the more likely individuals are to develop a set of norms and to exert effective formal and informal social control that reduces crime (Sampson & Groves, 1989) and to fend off attempts to change the social and physical nature of the area (Mesch, 1996).

Using an institutional theory perspective (micro and macro), the authors examined employment lawsuits across case type and alternative dispute resolution methods (negotiated settlements versus trials and arbitrations).

The authors examined actual data from US federal court lawsuits (N = 98,020). The data included the type of lawsuit, the dispute resolution method used and the outcome of the lawsuit in terms of the dollar amounts awarded.

The results show that employers were more likely to win in high social context cases (civil rights) than in other cases (Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, ERISA). In arbitrations, plaintiffs won more frequently and were awarded higher amounts in arbitration than in court trials. In arbitration, plaintiffs received more in high social context cases than in other cases.

The results show that employers lose more often and in larger dollar amounts in arbitration than in litigation. However, if arbitration rulings more closely matched the likely outcomes of trials, subsequent litigation would be less likely to be overturned, and transaction costs would be reduced. If this were the case, the arbitration of employment lawsuits would more closely match the arbitration of contractual grievances under the typical labor relations system, where the arbitrator’s decision is usually final and binding. This could be a better outcome for all stakeholders in the dispute resolution process.

This is the first study of its kind to examine actual workplace conflicts that result in employment-related lawsuits from the perspective of social contextual factors.

There is evidence to show that human capital represents “our greatest competitive potential…”, hence, absenteeism removes our primary competitive weapon. The tangible cost of absenteeism in the US is estimated to be over $40 billion per year. This figure does not include intangible costs such as reduced efficiency, loss of morale, supervisor's overload, and missed opportunities. There is clearly a need for effective methods of reducing employee absenteeism. The present article reviews the literature on absenteeism, with the aim of answering the following three questions: (1) How should an organisation define and measure absenteeism?; (2) What are the underlying causes of absence?; (3) Which are the best methods that an organisation might adopt to reduce absenteeism?

The purpose of this study is to examine Kelly's proposed fundraising roles scales to describe the daily activities of male and female fundraisers.

The data collection procedure involved a national survey to a random sample of 286 fundraisers from the American Health Association. The pen‐and‐paper survey had a 48 percent response rate, and the scale indices were found to be reliable with Cronbach alpha tests.

The study found that there were no statistical differences in how male and female fundraisers enacted the technician role; however, gender differences emerged for all three managerial roles with males enacting the roles at statistically significant greater rates.

This study represents an important initial step in advancing theoretical knowledge on fundraising, and it is the first quantitative test of Kelly's proposed fundraising role scales.

Purpose – The chapter aims to understand what kind of policy approach has been more successful in facilitating the involvement of patients and the public in the design and provision of health-care services at the local level and the explanatory factors justifying the implementation outcome.Methodology – By applying Richard Matland's ambiguity/conflict policy implementation model, the chapter analyses the impact of a number of policies introduced after 1997 in the English National Health Service that targeted final users and the local population in decision-making processes.Findings – The evidence shows that policies emphasising the importance of context-specific contingencies can be more effectively implemented when room for interpretation and discretion in selecting the appropriate means for involvement is given. In this way, the overall aims/purposes of health policies can be locally reshaped by allowing the adoption of flexible strategies within the implementation process.Practical implications – A strong leadership at the top of public sector organisations and, in particular, from the board of directors is needed to steer and facilitate a consensus oriented outcome in organisational decision-making processes that aim to incorporate the views and opinions of patients and the public.Social implications – Local initiatives in increasing participation, for specific purposes, are bound to be more successful than a general initiative, expecting comparatively uniform implementation.

Hospital restructuring and downsizing has taken place in most developed countries during the past ten years. A small but growing body of research findings has identified aspects of these changes that serve as sources of stress for nursing staff, as well as features of the restructuring process that contribute to more effective transitions. This research reports results of a longitudinal study of hospital restructuring and downsizing on nursing staff perceptions of hospital effectiveness. Data were collected in November 1996 and again in November 1999 from nursing staff using questionnaires. Would the way hospital restructuring was implemented and managed in 1996 be related to nursing staff perceptions of hospital functioning in 1999? The findings showed positive but moderate relationships between more favorable restructuring processes and perceptions of hospital functioning.

Historically business education has put greater emphasis on rational analysis and the acquisition of instrumental and technical knowledge, while paying relatively scant attention to developing business students’ soft skills such as self- and social awareness and emotional intelligence through contemplative learning. In light of the growing need for more open and diverse ways of knowing that are more holistic, emotional, and aesthetic in management education, the authors present a 2 × 2 framework of arts-based pedagogy which helps organize various arts-based practices currently used in management education. The authors also share their personal reflections on using artful practices, specifically focussing on two individual-level experiential learning activities (i.e. museum visits and e-portfolio projects) and one group-based participatory art project. The authors further discuss why creative thinking and innovative arts-based practices can open up a new possibility for filling the gaps in current management education, especially in regard to developing students’ self- and social awareness and environmental consciousness in a more creative manner.

In the late autumn of 2002 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out in Foshan city in the People's Republic of China, and over the next few months it rapidly spread to every continent and 29 countries. Although plagues may be global events, they are ultimately fought at the local level. In discussing the SARS epidemic, I present two theses. (1) In the wake of a plague, politics tends to shape a community's response in protecting the system, evaluating performances and allocating blame, punishments, and rewards, and restructuring organizations. (2) Because of their potential for demographic and institutional destruction, systemic responses to plague tend to become entwined in politics at all levels – the local, national, and international.

In a process termed “organizational centrifugalism,” this chapter describes how avant-garde artists sought new, alternative organizational spaces for innovations in the visual arts from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century and how new alternative marketspaces co-evolved with these new organizational spaces. Organizational centrifugalism begins with the denouement of the state-run Salon and Academy in the mid-nineteenth century; the rise of the dealer-critic system and other, non-salon alternative exhibition spaces of French Impressionism in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and through many new organizational spaces associated with Modernism such as formal artists groups, museums, great exhibitions, schools of art, and Modernist art itself. The ultimate effect of organizational centrifugalism is drawing avant-garde art closer to the public and eventually the masses. Excessive organizational centrifugalism, however, can be dangerous to the avant-garde art.