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Healthcare organizations have employed numerous strategies to promote quality improvement (QI) initiatives, yet little is known about their effectiveness. In 2008, staff in one organization developed an in-house QI training program designed for frontline managers and staff and this article aims to report employee perspectives

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 22 course participants to examine satisfaction, self-assessed change in proficiency and ability to successfully engage with QI initiatives. Sampling bias may have occurred as the participants volunteered for the study and they may not represent all course participants. Recall bias is also possible since most interviews took place one year after the course was completed to assess long-term impact. Respondents were asked to self-rate their pre- and post-course knowledge and skill, which may not represent what was actually learned.

Informants reported that the course expanded their QI knowledge and skills, and that supervisor support for the course was essential for success. Additionally, the course QI project provided participants with an opportunity to translate theory into practice, which has the potential to influence patient outcomes.

Several lessons for future QI training can be gleaned from this evaluation, including respondent opinions that it is challenging to offer one program when participants have different QI knowledge levels before the course begins, that “booster sessions” or refresher classes after the course ends would be helpful and that supervisor support was critical to successful QI-initiative implementation.

This study conducts in-depth interviews with QI course participants to elicit staff feedback on program structure and effectiveness. These findings can be used by QI educators to disseminate more effective training programs.

Co-creating value with customers is important for companies in order to gain a competitive advantage. Based on resource theory and social interaction theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the customer participation mechanism in co-creating value and test the effects of different types of customer resources and multi-level customer–firm interaction on customer value.

Data were collected from tourism industry. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that both the customer’s human resource and relationship resource have a significantly positive effect on customers’ utilitarian value and hedonic value through reactive and proactive interactions. Reactive interaction has a full mediating effect on the relationship between relationship resource and proactive interaction, whereas proactive interaction has a full mediating effect on the relationship between reactive interaction and hedonic value.

This study explores the mediating effects of customer–firm interaction between customer resources and customer value. This paper contributes to the understanding of customers’ motivations for, and the processes of, participating in value co-creation.

The employee-organization relationship (EOR) has increasingly become a focal point for researchers in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial relations. Literature on the EOR has developed at both the individual – (e.g. psychological contracts) and the group and organizational-levels of analysis (e.g. employment relationships). Both sets of literatures are reviewed, and we argue for the need to integrate these literatures as a means for improving understanding of the EOR. Mechanisms for integrating these literatures are suggested. A subsequent discussion of contextual effects on the EOR follows in which we suggest that researchers develop models that explicitly incorporate context. We then examine a number of theoretical lenses to explain various attributes of the EOR such as the dynamism and fairness of the exchange, and new ways of understanding the exchange including positive functional relationships and integrative negotiations. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed on the EOR.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

Whereas most societal commentators continue to review the historical patterns of men’s leadership in search of models for 21st-century success, few have begun to recognize, let alone appreciate, the equivalent patterns of women’s leadership and the future contributions that women could potentially make as leaders. What could and are women bringing to society as global leaders? Why at this moment in history is there such a marked increase in the number of women leaders? Are we entering an era in which both male and female leaders will shape history, both symbolically and in reality? And if so, will we discover that women, on average, lead in different ways than men, or will we learn that role (global leader) explains more than gender? This chapter reveals the accelerating trends of women joining men in senior leadership positions, establishes the relationship of women leaders to our overall understanding of global leadership, and sets forth an agenda to accomplish much needed research and understanding.

Perceived job alternatives (PJAs) play a central role in most theoretical models of employee turnover. However, the state of the empirical literature remains confused. The present study brings clarity to the literature via a meta-analytic review, delineating the key theoretical and empirical differences between perceived alternative availability (PAA) and perceived alternative quality (PAQ).

Using meta-analysis, we estimate correlations for PAA and PAQ and turnover behavior, as well as with each other, allowing us to examine their joint and unique predictive validity.

Although PAA (r = 0.15) and PAQ (r = 0.22) exhibited somewhat similar correlations with turnover, relative weight analysis revealed that the effect of PJA on turnover was nearly three times stronger for PAQ than for PAA.

Our work is the first systematic attempt to disentangle the relative contributions of alternative availability versus alternative quality in predicting turnover, offering implications for theory, empirical research and practice.

In this chapter, we make the argument that science-based firms in the life sciences are expected to actively expand the volume and scope of collaborations, and broaden the kinds of partners with whom they collaborate, as they grow larger, older, and become successful. We base our arguments on a general process of organizational learning in which organizations with diverse ties are exposed to a broader stock of knowledge, heterogeneity in the portfolio of collaborators facilitates innovation, and repeat contracting enables organizations to deepen their protocols for the exchange of information and resources. We draw from these ideas the conclusion that interfirm collaboration is not a transitional stage, or stepping stone, to success or maturity, but a significant organizational practice in technologically advanced fields. Extending this argument, we suggest this strategy of interfirm collaboration represents neither dependency nor specialization but an alternative way of accessing knowledge and resources.