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Recently, the operations management academic literature has seen articles focusing on the transfer of “lean” thinking or kaizen concept from the private to the public sector. In Spain, during the last 15 years, some local councils have also followed similar improvement initiatives sometimes under the umbrella of “global quality programmes” trying to support continuous process and service improvement. The research question for this article is: How is lean‐kaizen applied in local councils in Spain? The aim is to shed light on how lean thinking is applied in order to improve those services provided to the public by local councils by describing empirical studies in specific Spanish contexts.

The case study approach was adopted in this research. The research design conducted was of the longitudinal and retrospective type.

The results of the empirical evidence show that three techniques related to lean‐kaizen have a direct effect on the processes and management systems in local councils. The three techniques are: 5S, gemba kaizen workshops and process mapping. These techniques improved the processes and quality of public services provided by the councils. These results suggest the first indications of documented lean‐kaizen public service.

A review of the academic literature of lean thinking and kaizen concept indicates that the managerial application of the techniques in the public sector are few and far between and have been barely explored at the empirical level. The paper makes a contribution to the deeper understanding of the usefulness of applying lean‐kaizen in local government in order to improve the processes and services provided to the public – the emergence of lean‐kaizen public service.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what was important to managers of businesses in desert Australia, and in particular, what they needed for the businesses to be successful.

There were two studies. In Study 1, 88 managers of business in remote desert Australia were interviewed. In Study 2, 112 managers who had business in regional desert Australia participated in an on‐line survey.

In both studies, the respondents claimed that their businesses were reasonably successful. In Study 1, the interviewees said that making a living and seeing the business grow were important indices of success. In Study 2, customer/client satisfaction was the strongest indicator of business success. Factors such as safe and all‐weather roads, internet/e‐mail access and reliable power supplies were important to this success. The importance to business success of a number of leadership behaviours was also identified.

Future research needs to encourage a larger number of managers to participate. In addition, suppliers and customers of the businesses need to be included.

This is the first study in which managers were included, because normally, only owner‐managers are involved. It is also the first study of its kind to be undertaken in desert Australia.

Sexual violence (SV) is a pervasive public health issue on college campuses. While much research has been conducted to determine factors contributing to SV, little work focuses on the role of perceived social norms. The purpose of this paper is to examine college students’ perceived descriptive norms for SV perpetration (i.e. prevalence estimates for SV).

Using a cross-sectional survey, male and female college students from a large public institution in the Southeastern USA were instructed to estimate the prevalence of SV for “typical students” of their same gender on campus.

When compared to actual prevalence rates of SV perpetrated by females and males, both perpetrators and non-perpetrators overestimated the prevalence of SV among same-sex peers, but perpetrators made even higher estimates compared to those made by non-perpetrators for some sexually aggressive acts. Results demonstrate strong and consistent normative misperceptions surrounding SV perpetration.

Findings lend support for testing social norms-based prevention programs for SV on college campuses.

This study is one of the first investigations into perceived social norms surrounding SV; perceived social norms may be an influential factor contributing to SV.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact competency frameworks as standardisation can have on the employee engagement of academic staff within higher education (HE) through their employment as managerial tools.

A literature review is conducted from which the conditions for effective competency frameworks are evaluated and the influence of changes in the HE environment in the form of political agendas and tight resources are explored.

This paper provides insights into the dynamics of public service modernisation and the tensions between the dominant discourse of managerialism and the degree of agency afforded to professional academics. It highlights the relevance of informal peer relationships in setting the climate to generate collegial bonding and professional engagement that underpin successful teacher fellowship accreditations. It further highlights the key role managers play in this process and provides a conceptual framework highlighting the dynamics and combined effect of employee engagement and competency frameworks set within complex HE environment.

This paper brings together the prerequisites for effective implementation of competency frameworks to implement successful employee engagement strategies set within the complexities of the HE context, which has not been studied to date. Armed with such insights, Human Resource Development (HRD) departments and universities can implement competency assessments that generate greater staff engagement.

The paper provides a critical approach in reviewing the impact of Continued Professional Development and its link to professional status and thus helps British Universities and others to understand how the mechanisms at work affect engagement levels of academic staff. Armed with this depth of understanding of how the change initiative works, with whom and under what circumstances, universities will be better able to meet target UK Professional Standards Framework membership levels required by the higher education academy (HEA) and, subsequently, the HEA to meet their targets for the government.

The “Germanwings” air crash in 2015 in which 150 people were killed highlighted the challenges pilots working in the aviation industry face. Pilots regularly work for extensive periods in inhospitable and high-pressure operational conditions, exposing them to considerable work-related stress. This has raised calls for a more systemic cultural change across the aviation industry, championing a more holistic perspective of pilot health and well-being. The study aims to explore how peer coaching (PC) can promote an inclusive psychosocial safety climate enhancing pilot well-being and can mitigate hazardous attitudes and dysfunctional behaviours.

Adopting an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were conducted with military and civilian peer coach/coachee pilots and key industry stakeholders, totalling 39 participants. The research provided significant insights into the perceived value of PC in promoting both pilot health and mental well-being (MW) and flight safety across the aviation industry.

The study highlights four key PC superordinate themes, namely, coaching skills, significance of well-being, building of peer relationships and importance of confidentiality and autonomy. Such combined themes build reciprocal trust within peer conversations that can inspire engagement and effectively promote personal well-being. The contagious effect of such local interventions can help stimulate systemic cultural change and promote a positive psychosocial safety climate throughout an organisation and, in this case, across the aviation industry. This study provides a PC conceptual framework “Mutuality Equality Goals Autonomy Non-evaluative feedback, Skill Confidentiality Voluntary Supervisory (MEGANS CVS),” highlighting the salient features of PC in promoting MW.

The study highlights the salient features of PC and its role in promoting peer conversations that enable personal transition, openness and acceptance. This study also highlights how PC and well-being can be used to encourage inclusivity and engagement, thereby strengthening institutional resilience.

This study highlights how PC that can assist HRM/HRD professionals to embed a more inclusive and salutogenic approach to MW that can reshape organisational cultures. This study highlights the significance and link of workplace stress to hazardous attitudes and dysfunctional behaviours. It further notes that whilst the MEGANS CVS peer coaching framework has been applied to pilots, it can also be applied across all sectors and levels.

This study highlights the value of PC as an inexpensive means to engage at the grassroots level, which not only improves personal performance, safety and well-being but by building peer relationships can also act as a catalyst for positive and deep organisational cultural change.

This study offers the MEGANS CVS framework that exposes insights into PC practice that can assist HRM/HRD professionals embed a more inclusive and salutogenic approach to health and well-being that can reshape organisational cultures. This study highlights the significance and link of workplace stress to hazardous attitudes and dysfunctional behaviours, and whilst this framework has been applied to pilots, it can also have relevance across all sectors and levels. This study calls for a “salutogenic turn,” employing MW and PC to transform organisational capabilities to be more forward-thinking and solution-focused, promoting an inclusive “just culture” where leaders positively lead their people.

There are three main analytic challenges to studying kids, especially where the core focus is inequality: (1) minimizing the power imbalance between adults/researchers and kids/participants, (2) attending to the active and imaginative communication styles of young people, and (3) getting beneath the superficial rhetoric of meritocracy, colorblindness, and post-feminism. In this chapter, we draw from our own qualitative insights when studying middle school kids (grades 6–8, ages 11–14) in providing a systematic analysis of the effectiveness of distinct visual strategies and their respective strengths and limitations for producing rich, useful, and specific data. The insights gleaned are applicable to analyses of kids, understandings of inequality, and even methodological training.

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.

This paper aims to examine the integration of librarian-led health literacy instruction into an undergraduate course, focusing specifically on how the method of instruction impacts learning outcomes and self-reported confidence levels in completing a course assignment. Undergraduate students struggle to critically evaluate online health information in an increasingly diffuse information landscape. Assessing the success of different instructional techniques aimed at building these abilities can guide pedagogical choices and provide new opportunities to increase health literacy skills in a variety of library user populations.

A quasi-experimental research design with pre- and post-tests and a participant survey was used to compare one-shot information literacy instruction techniques in two hybrid sections of a kinesiology course. One class received a traditional, face-to-face librarian-led session and the other a synchronous online instructional session through web conferencing.

There were no significant differences in student learning between the in-person and online groups. Students in both conditions demonstrated an extremely significant increase from pre-test to post-test scores, suggesting that librarian-led instruction in either format can lead to substantial learning of online health literacy skills. Survey results showed no significant differences in confidence levels following instruction and suggest that both methods of instruction provide a positive learning experience for students.

This study provides evidence that synchronous online instruction can be as effective as face-to-face instruction in teaching students to evaluate health-related information resources. These findings are valuable for librarians in a variety of settings who are considering providing health literacy education in an online environment.