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WHEN A biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was returned to Kendal library by post from Oxford University with a stamp on the date label of 5 Feb 1916 no one considered this to be very startling news. There was a compliment slip inside apologising for the delay (‘It was lurking in one of our darker corners’). I sent them a brief note thanking them, and that I thought was that.

Past research identifies many positive outcomes associated with workplace exercise initiatives. Realizing these outcomes is, however, dependent on securing sustained employee participation in the initiative. This study examines how organizational factors influence employee participation in workplace exercise initiatives.

The study utilizes data from 98 employees who were provided with the opportunity to participate in a workplace exercise initiative. Data were collected via an online survey as well as semi-structured interviews.

The paper shows that organizational, rather than individual-level, factors had the greatest impact on employee participation in workplace exercise initiatives. Leadership support for well-being was particularly important and had a significant effect on participation frequency. This relationship was moderated by employee perceptions of employer intentions, such that the more genuine and caring an employer’s intentions were perceived to be, the more likely employees were to participate. Our findings also show that perceived employer intentions have a significant direct effect on employee participation.

We extend research on employee participation in well-being initiatives by considering the influence of organizational, rather than individual-level, factors.

This research is of practical significance as it highlights the importance of positive leadership in fostering physical well-being in the workplace. It reinforces that sustained participation in workplace exercise initiatives requires deliberate planning, promotion and support from organizational leaders.

Most studies of workplace exercise and well-being initiatives focus on individual barriers to participation. Our study highlights the important role of leadership support and perceived intentions as organizational influences on employee participation.

Organisational resilience and digital maturity both explain how some organisations are better able to cope with unexpected disruptions. However, research exploring the relationship between these two concepts, and their role in addressing exogenous shocks, remains sparse. This study first aimed to compare digitally mature SME retailers’ organisational resilience with that of digitally less mature SME retailers and then investigate further how their digital maturity impacted their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors adopt an explanatory two-phase mixed-method research design, with online surveys from 79 SME retailers in South Africa, followed by interviews.

Digitally mature SMEs exhibited higher levels of organisational resilience, specifically with respect to situational awareness, management of keystone vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity. The authors also demonstrate that digital leadership is a greater driver of organisational resilience than digital capabilities.

The authors suggest ways for SME retailers to develop their digital maturity, particularly their digital leadership, to increase their organisational resilience.

This paper makes a case for SME retailers to focus on building their digital maturity to better cope with and learn from unexpected events. In particular, digital maturity is positively associated with SME retailers’ innovation and creativity and their devolved and responsive decision-making.

Natural disasters and other crises present methodological challenges to organizational researchers. While these challenges are well canvassed in the literature, less attention has been paid to understanding how distinct crisis events may present, not only unique challenges, but also important opportunities for research. In this chapter, we draw on our collective experience of conducting post-earthquake research and compare this with the COVID-19 pandemic context in order to identify and discuss the inherent vulnerabilities associated with disaster studies and the subsequent methodological challenges and opportunities that researchers might encounter. Adopting a critical perspective, the chapter grapples with some of the more contentious issues associated with research in a disaster and crisis context including aspects of stakeholder engagement, ethics, reciprocity, inequality, and vulnerability.

This paper highlights the Partnership Model as an apposite approach to the planning and implementation of learning in organizations.

The authors provide a brief overview of the changing context for learning and development in organizations, followed by a discussion on the need for a shift in our approach to training. The authors draw attention to the Partnership Model as a solution to move forward.

The knowledge‐driven economy demands new skills sets for employees and new approaches to learning in organizations, yet trainer‐centric models such as ADDIE still dominate the training literature and practice. As a result, potentially more suitable approaches, such as the Partnership Model, have not gained traction with practitioners. The authors suggest that this is in part due to the practical challenges involved in establishing learning cultures and partnerships in organizations.

The paper offers practical suggestions for developing a more learner‐centric, strategically aligned learning and development function through partnership and conversation with key stakeholders in the organization.

The paper offers practical suggestions for developing a more learner‐centric, strategically aligned learning and development function through partnership and conversation with key stakeholders in the organization.

There has been virtually no explication of poetry-writing pedagogy in historical accounts of Australian distance education during the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to satisfy this gap in scholarship.

The paper concerns a particular episode in the cultural history of education; an episode upon which print media of the 1930s sheds a distinctive light. The paper therefore draws extensively on 1930s press reports to: contextualise the key educational debates and prime-movers inspiring verse-writing pedagogy in Australian education, particularly distance education, in order to; concentrate specific attention on the creation and popular reception of Brave Young Singers (1938), the first and only anthology of children's poetry written entirely by students of the correspondence classes of Western Australia.

Published under the auspices of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) with funds originating from the Carnegie Corporation, two men in particular proved crucial to the development and culmination of Brave Young Singers. As the end result of a longitudinal study conducted by James Albert Miles with the particular support of Frank Tate, the publication attracted acclaim as a research document promoting ACER's success in educational research investigating the “experiment” of poetry-writing instruction through correspondence schooling.

The paper pays due critical attention to a previously overlooked anthology of Australian children's poetry while simultaneously presenting an original account of the emergence and implementation of verse-writing instruction within the Australian correspondence class curriculum of the 1930s.

The purpose of this paper is to resolve and remove from the governance arena in general and the project arena in particular, conflict which occurs when parties do not realise they have different meanings for common governance terms.

Review literature on definitional confusion in general and on governance in particular and develop a method for defining an internally consistent group of terms, then apply this to a group of terms in the governance arena.

Several important subjects commonly arranged under the governance banner do not actually constitute governance (strategy, behaviour, decision making).

Further work is necessary to remove similar confusion in other closely related areas, including power itself and authority as well as project and general management terms such as responsibility and accountability.

Projects and business alike can potentially achieve significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness through gaining consistency across current models, frameworks, policies and procedures thus reducing cross-boundary conflict.

Creation of a unifying feature within the project and management literature, shifting the understanding of the boundaries and limitations of governance. These definitions will help progress governance from complexity to simplicity, from an art to an understandable practice, from a concept that has been hijacked for partisan and political gain to a lean social tool which can be put to use for the benefit of organisations, whether public, charitable or private.

The value is clarity – resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.