Quantifying the economic impact of career guidance in secondary education

Career guidance in secondary education has the potential to play a role in several related areas of government policy, including: youth unemployment prevention or re-engagement; education course choices, transitions, and motivation; skill shortages, regional economic development, and labour mobility; lifelong learning, mental health, and wellbeing. Experts have long identified a need for a more robust, quantitative understanding of medium-term and long-term benefits, to engage policymakers and gain adequate funding for career guidance. Some government officials, particularly those responding to pressure from finance ministries, further request that the economic impact be monetised and contrasted against costs, to support analysis such as return on investment (ROI). This can be challenging because school-based career guidance often, and especially in England, refers to a diverse range of interventions that are small scale compared to the curriculum as a whole, theorised to have correspondingly modest average effects that can be hard to isolate statistically. Nonetheless, small effects from low-cost interventions can still translate into attractive policies from an ROI perspective. This critical appraisal reviews the contributions and limitations of a selection of the author’s work from 2008 to 2022 in improving our understanding of the economic impact of career guidance in secondary education, drawing primarily on new empirical work in Great Britain and the international literature. The corpus is grouped into three themes: (i) Measuring impact: strengthening the quantitative evidence base for the medium-term impact of career guidance on education progression or labour market outcomes, drawing on historical longitudinal surveys, school-level data, administrative data, and contemporary surveys of young adults. (ii) Monetising impact: applying a pragmatic ROI estimation framework to personal guidance conversations for students in English secondary education. The methodology, well-suited to interventions with few large-scale evaluations, was then re-applied and extended in a study for Careers Wales which addressed school-age and adult career guidance, the latter selected for a Cedefop collection which sets out a formalisation of this “linked ROI” methodology. (iii) Interpreting impact: exploring particular limitations and nuances of this evidence and the ROI method as applied to date, such that results might be appropriately used by policymakers, sector leaders, and the research community. A broad range of career guidance activities are in scope, reflecting The Gatsby Benchmarks framework, which became government policy in England at end 2017. Example quantitative insights from the corpus include 0.8% higher average earnings for those in full-time employment associated with each extra career talk received aged 14-15 and an estimated 4.4x fiscal ROI for the provision of two personal guidance interviews. A future research agenda is outlined to enhance the breadth and usefulness of available evidence and ROI analyses. A synthesis view of these contributions identifies a future opportunity to adopt a stronger systems perspective. Such an approach would address key limitations in the corpus: the limited statistical accounting for causality and displacement and the limited consideration of systemic factors, specific mechanisms, and innovative, future-focused approaches to guidance

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Organisational maturity and information systems and technology projects in healthcare: the mediation of project management.

Doutoramento em GestãoThe challenges that health organisations face today is to get better organisational performance, reliable information, faster quality services at prices that should be affordable to the entire population. To fulfil this important goal, health organisations require more comprehensive and integrated approaches such as, but not limited to, optimise their available resources, eliminate inefficiencies and achieve the planned benefits from investments in Information Systems and Technology (IS/IT). Healthcare organisations must improve their management practices and internal procedures to answer the increasing demand of managers, health professionals and the public in general, for more and better information. Health organisations adopt a patient-centred care approach and invest massively in IS/IT, hoping that these investments will improve medical care and patient needs. The main objective of our research is to analyse how the Organisational Maturity affect IS/IT Project Success in Healthcare and if that success is enhanced by using Project Management practices. There is evidence that there is a direct relationship between these variables and that Project Management practices can mediate it, helping to increase the effectiveness of IS/IT projects. Furthermore, the application of the Project Management practices can also improve confidence that the results of these investments meet stakeholders’ expectations, both by the benefits accomplishment and by adding a perceived value to organisations. This study develops and validates an instrument to analyse the data collected from a survey to professionals’ perceptions about the IS/IT Project Success in Healthcare organisations. The results confirm that Project Management has a mediating effect on the relationship between Organizational Maturity and success of IS/IT projects and higher levels of Organisational Maturity will generate more successfully IS/IT projects, although the presence of the mediator Project Management can, in specific situations, affect negatively the correlation between Organisational Maturity and IS/IT Project Success.Os desafios que enfrentam atualmente as organizações de saúde estão diretamente relacionados com o fato de ambicionarem um melhor desempenho, mais e melhor informação de saúde, serviços de qualidade mais céleres. a custos acesíveis à maioria da população. Para o total cumprimento deste desiderato as organizações de saúde têm investido em soluções tecnológicas mais abrangentes e integradas de forma a otimizar os recursos disponíveis, eliminar ineficiências e atingir os benefícios plenos dos investimentos em Sistemas e Tecnologias da Informação (SI/TI). As organizações de saúde procuram melhorar as suas práticas de gestão para dar resposta a uma crescente procura de informação de saúde por parte de gestores, profissionais e público em geral. As organizações de saúde adotaram uma abordagem centrada no paciente e realizaram significativos investimentos em SI/TI na expetativa de que estes trouxessem melhorias ao nível assistencial e na satisfação das expetativas dos seus utilizadores. O principal objetivo deste trabalho é analisar como a Maturidade Organizacional afeta o sucesso do projeto em SI/TI em saúde e se esse sucesso é potenciado pela utilização de práticas de gestão de projetos. Há evidências da existência de uma relação direta entre esstas duas variáveis e que as práticas de Gestão de Projetos a podem mediar, ajudando a aumentar a eficácia dos projetos de SI/TI. Além disso, a aplicação das práticas de Gestão de Projetos podem melhorar a confiança nos resultados dos investimentos e atender às expectativas das diferentes partes interessadas, tanto pela realização de benefícios quanto pela criação de valor percebido para as organizações. Este estudo analisa os dados recolhidos de um questionário à perceção dos profissionais sobre o sucesso dos projetos IS/IT nas organizações de saúde. Os resultados obtidos confirmam. Os resultados confirmam que o Gestão de Projetos tem um efeito mediador na relação entre Maturidade Organizacional e Sucesso de Projetos de SI/TI e níveis mais elevados de Maturidade Organizacional gerarão projetos SI/TI mais bem-sucedidos, embora a presença do mediador Gestão de Projetos, possa, em circunstâncias específicas situações, afetar negativamente a correlação entre as duas variáveis.N/

Impact of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Organizational Culture on Business Performance: The Role of Supply Chain Management

With the expanding multifaceted nature and vulnerability of worldwide inventory chains, interruption occasions are as often as possible happening in production network. Commercial condition is separated into two sorts including inner and outer business conditions. In the examination, our inward business condition is organization culture and inside business condition is supply chain performance (SCP). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to quantify the impact of organizational culture (OC), corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and its components on business performance (BP) through SCP in the non-financial sector of Thailand. Research sample comprises of 120 non-financial firms operating in Thailand. The study finds that SCP fully mediates the relationship between work reinforcement BP and time availability and BP. Whereas, SCP is found to have partial mediation in the relationship between CE BP, OC BP, management support BP, organization boundaries BP and reward reinforcement and BP. Findings of study are important for mangers in understanding and implementation of better OC which leads to CE and will ultimately enhance BP