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The purpose of this paper is to focus on developing a deep understanding of the nature and impact of the workplace mentor role in degree apprenticeships (DAs). It investigates a theoretical model of DA workplace mentoring activity, with findings used to develop a set of principles for supporting the development of effective mentoring practice.

Data underpinning this paper were collected as part of the monitoring and evaluation of the first year of a Chartered Manager DA programme at a post-1992 university. Workplace mentors and mentees were interviewed to explore their experience of mentoring within this programme.

This study found there to be many positive benefits of workplace mentoring for apprentices, their mentors and the organisation. This understanding can be used to support the development of principles for effective mentoring practice.

The data support the validity of the proposed model for DA workplace mentoring activity. In order to become a helpful guide to mentors’ planning of areas of support, the model may need to be refined to show the relative importance given to each activity area. The findings of this small-scale study need now to be extended through work with a larger sample.

The set of principles offered will be valuable to workplace mentors of degree apprentices across organisational sectors to ensure the quality of delivery and outcomes.

This paper contributes to an understanding of the impact of mentoring as a social practice on mentor and apprentice development. Such an understanding has the potential to positively influence the quality of delivery, mentoring practice and thus apprentices’ learning.

This paper aims to demonstrate the variety of ways institutions and their libraries approach student success both conceptionally and operationally.

Librarians from nine different institutions of higher education were given a series of questions about student success on their campuses and in their libraries. They responded with written essays describing their experiences and perspectives.

The contributed pieces are collected together and display a shared interest in defining “student success,” aligning strategic planning with student success initiatives and establishing (and assessing) strong infrastructure to support student success.

These examples help us observe what is happening throughout higher education and see potential paths forward at our own institutions engaged in this work.

Quality management (QM) practices have long been suggested as a package to improve the quality performance of a company. Yet, empirical studies offered little support of this perspective as only a small set of QM practices were found to be conductive to quality improvement. By taking a new approach, the purpose of this paper is simultaneously evaluate the individual and synergistic effects of several key quality practices on operations performance.

Survey data were collected and used to test the proposed hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to assess the magnitude of synergistic effects and individual effects.

It is found in this study that the synergistic effects across QM practices are substantial in enhancing all operations performance dimensions whereas individual effect varies for different performance goals.

This study makes theoretical contributes to the field of QM by providing empirical support of the interdependence assumption of QM practices and resolving the inconsistent findings. Practically, the results suggest that in-depth implementation of various QM practices simultaneously can be highly effective to achieve performance improvement on all accounts. In addition, the positive additional individual effects also open up a firm’s strategic choices of where to focus the resource investment in the adoption process as long as the strategic focus can justify its contribution toward the desired performance goals.

Operational practices and operational capabilities are critical yet distinct elements in operations strategy. The purpose of this paper is to examine their conceptual differences and explore how they are developed in a portfolio, considering the potential for practices and capabilities to be either compensatory or additive in nature.

The compensatory model argues that the lack of investments in certain practices or capabilities can be offset by higher level of investments in other practices or capabilities. In contrast, the additive model argues that the firm must invest in certain practices or capabilities and that trade‐offs are impossible. The authors examine evidence for these two competing models using an approach borrowed from studies of multi‐attribute consumer preference models and statistical comparisons of non‐nested models.

Data for the study were collected from operations managers who were members of a large professional organization. The findings indicate that the effects of operational practices are additive for some operational outcomes and compensatory for others. However, the combinatorial nature of operational capabilities is purely compensatory.

The results imply that adequate investment in a wide range of operational practices is necessary to enhance operations performance. However, operations units appear to have more flexibility in choosing to develop a distinctive operational capability set.

The study clarifies the different orientation of operational practices and operational capabilities as they contribute to operations strategy. The findings provide guidelines regarding the combinatorial natures of operational practices and operational capabilities. These guidelines have critical strategic implications for resource allocation schemes and how these schemes affect operational performance.

“The Need to Disrupt Social Control” discusses three examples: sexual assault, civil rights, and state security, and how all three involve social control forces that promote or permit the oppression of individuals, groups, and societies. Amentahru Wahlrab, Sarah M. Sass, and Robert Edward Sterken Jr. briefly provide examples of how social control can be disrupted including #MeToo (sexual assault), the American Civil Rights Movement (civil rights), and the Arab Spring (authoritarian regimes) to illustrate how social control has been disrupted in these areas. The chapter illustrates how patriarchal norms allow for sexual assault by those with power within contexts, such as Hollywood, academia, business, and politics. Sexual assault survivors and bystanders often do not report instances of assault due to informal social norms permitting such actions and fear of personal and professional harm.

On a different level, the jail in the American south was one of the most feared institutions for African Americans. It was not uncommon for an African American to never return from what would be a night in the “drunk tank” for a white person. Black Americans stayed “in their place” due to the threat of the jail cell. Finally, the chapter details how tyrants use the full weight of state security forces, including the police and the military, to maintain their control. Fear of security forces is routinely encouraged by arrests, torture, and even disappearance (of people) at the hands of the security forces. “The Need to Disrupt Social Control” concludes that in these cases, social control maintains an oppressive order of some kind, thus social control is understood as a potential negative.

One of the commonly cited problems in the implementation of quality practices is related to cultural resistance to change. While the importance of organizational culture to quality management (QM) practices has been recognized in the recent literature, little is known about how quality culture influences quality performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mechanism of how the nurture of quality culture in a firm influences quality performance.

This study empirically assesses the path from quality culture to infrastructure practices, core practices, and finally to quality performance using data collected from 397 Chinese manufacturing firms in a structural equitation model.

The results indicate a chain effect that quality culture serves as an antecedent for infrastructure practices to take effect and infrastructure practices provide a supporting foundation for core practices to generate positive impact on quality performance. Anything that breaks on the chain will cause a problem in quality practices implementation.

The results of this study contribute to understanding the cultural implications for successful QM implementation. The study emphasizes that quality implementation needs to be considered as a system work where culture is an indispensible part. This offers practical insights of how firms operating in China could build quality advantages other than cost.

Considering the benefits that gender diversity could bring to audit firms, especially in a time when the audit profession faces criticism and the COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gender inequality gap, this study aims to explore the lived experiences of female former audit managers from a social role theory and role congruity theory perspective, to understand the factors that contributed towards their resignations.

An exploratory qualitative research approach and an interpretative phenomenological analysis design were used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior female audit managers who had resigned from Johannesburg Stock Exchange-accredited audit firms.

The female former audit managers reported their unique experiences in terms of a lack of transparent career progression discussions, audit firms being run by “old boys’ clubs” and unfair treatment linked to bias, job overload and indistinct ambitions to become audit partners.

The homogeneous sample included a small number of female participants from a limited number of audit firms.

The findings could inform audit firms how to address the factors contributing to female audit managers’ resignations and to challenge stereotypes to retain more women for promotion to audit partner-level, thereby capitalising on the benefits of a diversified management structure that could lead to higher quality audits and address gender inequality.

This study aims to examine the association of social media advertising with deposit contracts and consumers joining a fitness club/gym.

This paper surveyed 745 college students. Three deposit contract options were presented with goals of losing 5% of your original weight, losing 10 pounds from your weight and exercising for 75 min.

This paper found that consumers chose deposit contracts at higher rates than no contract or regular contract options. This paper found that behavioral control was positively associated with choosing a deposit contract. This paper found that presence of a weight problem was positively associated with choosing a deposit contract with very concrete goals of losing 10 pounds or exercising for 75 min while no association occurred for the less specific concrete goal of losing 5% of your original weight.

In conclusion, marketers can consider a novel advertising approach on social media of advertising deposit contract information to possibly interest consumers to join a fitness club/gym.