Global Benchmarks: A Human Resource Management Tool for Knowledge Management Implementation

This paper focuses on the strategic importance of managing and leveraging generic knowledge assets, in the form of benchmarking, for human resource management. Often knowledge assets are never located when the need arises to use them. This results in organizations incurring huge costs and efforts in “re-inventing the wheel” or grappling with the challenge of locating, selecting and applying the knowledge assets to create or sustain the competitiveness of organizations. A review of the literature is conducted in order to present an appraisal of available benchmarks for knowledge management in key international economies. It is argued that acquiring and implementing best practices is a cost effective means of adopting and using existing knowledge. The recipient of the existing knowledge must be able to select and apply best practices that add value to the organization. Best practice knowledge assets are mostly explicit in nature, and become tacit knowledge when such knowledge is applied in specific contexts.&nbsp

Assessment Report 2012 Nike, USA AA0000000017

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_2012_Nike_AR_USA_AA0000000017.pdf: 57 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Making the Most of Interim Assessment Data: Lessons from Philadelphia

Under No Child Left Behind, urban school districts have increasingly turned to interim assessments, administered at regular intervals, to help gauge student progress in advance of annual state exams. These assessments have spawned growing debate among educators, assessment experts, and the testing industry: are they worth the significant investment of money and time? In Making the Most of Interim Assessment Data: Lessons from Philadelphia, Research for Action (RFA) weighs in on this issue. The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) was an early adopter of interim assessments, implementing the exams in 2003. Unlike teachers in some other regions, Philadelphia elementary and middle grades teachers rated these 'Benchmark' assessments highly. However, the study found that enthusiasm did not necessarily correlate with higher rates of student achievement. What did predict student success were three factors -- instructional leadership, collective responsibility, and use of the SDP's Core Curriculum. The report underscores the value of investment in ongoing data interpretation that emphasizes teachers' learning within formal instructional communities, such as grade groups of teachers. This research was funded by the Spencer Foundation and the William Penn Foundation

Social networking and open educational resources: updating quality assurance for e-learning excellence

Quality assurance approaches in higher education are well-established, but it is important to develop methods which are applicable to the domain of e-learning. The E-xcellence methodology (EADTU, 2009a) was therefore designed to assess the quality of e-learning in distance learning and blended learning contexts. The methodology is based around a set of benchmarks, supported by a practitioner handbook and a web-based ‘QuickScan’ self-evaluation tool. Experience shows that the E-xcellence methodology is particularly valuable for the process of improvement through collaborative internal review. E-learning has evolved since the E-xcellence methodology was first developed. In particular, there is increasing awareness and use of open education resources (OERs) and social networking. However, these aspects were not explicit in the original E-xcellence resources. The E-xcellence Next project was therefore established to update the resources, incorporating these developments. To begin this process, a consultation was carried out among E-xcellence Next project members, followed by a participatory workshop on the themes of social networking and OERs. The E-xcellence resources were also used in a series of self-evaluation seminars held at European higher education institutions. Experience and feedback from these activities has been used to update the manual, the benchmarks and the QuickScan tool. The result is a set of quality assurance resources which encompass social networking, OERs and other recent developments in e-learning

ALOJA: A benchmarking and predictive platform for big data performance analysis

The main goals of the ALOJA research project from BSC-MSR, are to explore and automate the characterization of cost-effectivenessof Big Data deployments. The development of the project over its first year, has resulted in a open source benchmarking platform, an online public repository of results with over 42,000 Hadoop job runs, and web-based analytic tools to gather insights about system's cost-performance1. This article describes the evolution of the project's focus and research lines from over a year of continuously benchmarking Hadoop under dif- ferent configuration and deployments options, presents results, and dis cusses the motivation both technical and market-based of such changes. During this time, ALOJA's target has evolved from a previous low-level profiling of Hadoop runtime, passing through extensive benchmarking and evaluation of a large body of results via aggregation, to currently leveraging Predictive Analytics (PA) techniques. Modeling benchmark executions allow us to estimate the results of new or untested configu- rations or hardware set-ups automatically, by learning techniques from past observations saving in benchmarking time and costs.This work is partially supported the BSC-Microsoft Research Centre, the Span- ish Ministry of Education (TIN2012-34557), the MINECO Severo Ochoa Research program (SEV-2011-0067) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2014-SGR-1051).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Middle and elementary school students’ changes in self-determined motivation in a basketball unit taught using the Tactical Games Model

Studies examining student motivation levels suggest that this is a significant factor in students’ engagement in physical education and may be positively affected when teachers employ alternative pedagogical models such as game-centered approaches (GCAs). The aim of this study was to investigate changes in self-determined motivation of students as they participated in a GCA-basketball unit taught using the Tactical Games Model (TGM). Participants were 173 students (84 girls), 79 middle school (45 girls) and 94 (39 girls) elementary school students from four seventh and five fourth/fifth grade co-educational classes. Two teachers taught 32 (middle) and 33 (elementary) level one TGM basketball lessons. Need satisfaction and self-determined motivation data were collected using a previously validated instrument, while lesson context and teacher behavior data were recorded using systematic observation instruments. Repeated measures MANOVAs were employed to examine pre-posttest differences. Results revealed a significant main effect for time in need satisfaction for both middle (relatedness increased) and elementary school students (autonomy decreased) and a significant main effect in self-determined motivation for middle school students only (introjected regulation, external regulation, and amotivation all increased). Approximately 48%/42% (middle/elementary) of lesson time was game play, 22%/22% skill practice, 17%/17% management, and 13%/19% knowledge. The primary teacher behaviors used were instruction, management, specific observation, corrective feedback and modelling. Results indicate that it is important for future research to pay greater attention to the contextual factors associated with the application of the TGM, such as the students’ previous exposure to TGM lessons, and the teachers’ training and experience in utilizing the TGM. Indeed, results of the present study demonstrate that a longer-term commitment to the TGM is necessary to reduce controlling teacher behaviors, which will lead to positive changes in students’ need satisfaction and self-determined motivation. Future research is therefore needed to embrace this challenge to provide an increased evidence-base for GCAs such as the TGM

"Looking behind the veil": invisible corporate intangibles, stories, structure and the contextual information content of disclosure

Purpose – This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making "invisible" intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants. Design/methodology/approach – A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative. Findings – Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way. Research limitations/implications – These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for "material" or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance. Practical implications – This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators. Originality/value – The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies

Assessment Report 2012 Grupo Miguel, El Salvador AA0000000158

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_2012_Grupo_Miguel_AR_El_Salvador_AA0000000158.pdf: 20 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020