Reclaiming professional identity through postgraduate professional development: Career practitioners reclaiming their professional selves

Careers advisers in the UK have experienced significant change and upheaval within their professional practice. This research explores the role of postgraduate level professional development in contributing to professional identity. The research utilises a case study approach and adopts multiple tools to provide an in-depth examination of practitioners’ perceptions of themselves as professionals within their lived world experience. It presents a group of practitioners struggling to define themselves as professionals due to changing occupational nomenclature resulting from shifting government policy. Postgraduate professional development generated a perceived enhancement in professional identity through exposure to theory, policy and opportunities for reflection, thus contributing to more confident and empowered practitioners. Engagement with study facilitated development of confident, empowered practitioners with a strengthened sense of professional self

Exploring the impact of technological competence development on speed and NPD program performance

With growing levels of competition across industries, technological competence is increasingly viewed as crucial for businesses to maintain their long-term competitive advantage. Although there are many theoretical arguments about how firms' competences can yield competitive advantage and performance improvement, we have a limited understanding of where the capabilities originate in the context of NPD or what kind of product portfolios, internal climate and strategic alignment are required to build them. Moreover, empirical evidence for technological competence development is limited and comes primarily from case studies, anecdotal evidence, and management impressions. Accordingly, this research addresses these gaps by presenting and testing a conceptual model of technological competence development in NPD. This study makes advances in applying a dynamic capability approach to technological competence development in NPD, and investigates the impact of innovative climate, technological alignment, and project portfolio management on technological competence development as well as NPD speed. Moreover, the factors that might influence NPD program performance are also investigated. The analysis, based on data collected from 164 firms, shows that a firm's innovative climate, technological alignment and portfolio management are positively associated with technological competence development. While technological alignment was found to be negatively related to NPD speed, portfolio management and technological competence development were found to have positive effects on speed. However, innovative climate had no significant impact on speed. Moreover, technological competence development and portfolio management were found to be positively related to NPD program performance. Finally, the authors found no support for the relationship between speed and NPD program performance

Analysing Consumer Responses to Food Safety Results of a Survey in the Netherlands

Consumer confidence in food safety appears to be under pressure as a result of several food scandals and food scares in recent years. Regaining the trust of food consumers in food production and food products is talk of the town in both government buildings and agribusiness offices. Instead of talking about consumers, this article is first and foremost about what consumers themselves think and feel about food safety. The foundation of this research is a survey among nearly 1100 Dutch consumers. Investigation focuses on food safety from the consumer's perspective in which food safety is examined comprehensively. This manifests itself in the dependent variables this research takes into consideration. With respect to the independent variables, multivariate analysis shows that both classic, socio-economic variables such as age or income, and modern variables of a socio-cultural origin are relevant in analysing and understanding contemporary food consumers.food safety, consumer concerns, risk perception, attitude, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Uncovering treatment burden as a key concept for stroke care: a systematic review of qualitative research

<b>Background</b> Patients with chronic disease may experience complicated management plans requiring significant personal investment. This has been termed ‘treatment burden’ and has been associated with unfavourable outcomes. The aim of this systematic review is to examine the qualitative literature on treatment burden in stroke from the patient perspective.<p></p> <b>Methods and findings</b> The search strategy centred on: stroke, treatment burden, patient experience, and qualitative methods. We searched: Scopus, CINAHL, Embase, Medline, and PsycINFO. We tracked references, footnotes, and citations. Restrictions included: English language, date of publication January 2000 until February 2013. Two reviewers independently carried out the following: paper screening, data extraction, and data analysis. Data were analysed using framework synthesis, as informed by Normalization Process Theory. Sixty-nine papers were included. Treatment burden includes: (1) making sense of stroke management and planning care, (2) interacting with others, (3) enacting management strategies, and (4) reflecting on management. Health care is fragmented, with poor communication between patient and health care providers. Patients report inadequate information provision. Inpatient care is unsatisfactory, with a perceived lack of empathy from professionals and a shortage of stimulating activities on the ward. Discharge services are poorly coordinated, and accessing health and social care in the community is difficult. The study has potential limitations because it was restricted to studies published in English only and data from low-income countries were scarce.<p></p> <b>Conclusions</b> Stroke management is extremely demanding for patients, and treatment burden is influenced by micro and macro organisation of health services. Knowledge deficits mean patients are ill equipped to organise their care and develop coping strategies, making adherence less likely. There is a need to transform the approach to care provision so that services are configured to prioritise patient needs rather than those of health care systems

Transfers of capital and shifts in New Zealand’s regional population distribution, 1840-1996

When researchers attempt to study population and development, and particularly the role of migrations, the focus is normally on national level trends, frequently involving time-series analyses of more generic indicators of population change and economic growth. The migration field does, of course, deal with questions of the integration of migrants, at a macro-level evaluating their impact on social diversity and cohesion by turning to ecological-level indices covering clustering. This paper takes a different approach in part inspired by the model developed by Le Heron, Britton and Parson to analyse a related question: restructuring. This they saw as likely to be induced and thus frequently exogenous to a particular socio-demographic system. For example, policies effecting restructuring at a regional level will often come from some central agency external to the region, or even outside the geographic territory or country. There are also other changes that can be spontaneous in nature, arising from a mix of factors and situations endogenous to a given area.1 In both cases, so these authors argue (1992:5), we must deal with “processes operating at various geographic scales...”. To this end this paper thus employs as demographic variables indices plotting subnational changes, thereby recognising that population dynamics at the national-level are likely to be a composite of complex societal forces varying from region to region. For much of this essay, which is more an exercise in setting research agendas than a full-scale empirical analysis, the regional breakdown is very broad, attempting to distinguish between the more dominant and less dominant poles at any time

The Estonian organizations - the subjects of transformation

Estonia stayed fifty years under the communist regime. This paper explores the transformation of Estonian organizations within the framework of the Leavitt's model of change where the process is analyzed from the perspective of four organizational elements: people, organizational goals, structure, and technology. In respect with the people the role of individuals is emphasized as well as the polarization of mindsets is discussed. The new era forced to clarify the organizational task because of market economy. The organizational structure does not change as fast as the other elements do and hierarchy considered being important. The formalization tactics (personnel selection and training) have gained new meaning in the process of transformation of organizations. The technology has varied due to the twofold possibilities- advantage to introduce the new informational technology and the usage of the old fashion machinery. Change of the society led to the change of organizations, which had the transformational nature. There was shown that all the elements of the organizations had the pressure to find new forms of existence

Information and communication technology solutions for outdoor navigation in dementia

INTRODUCTION: Information and communication technology (ICT) is potentially mature enough to empower outdoor and social activities in dementia. However, actual ICT-based devices have limited functionality and impact, mainly limited to safety. What is an ideal operational framework to enhance this field to support outdoor and social activities? METHODS: Review of literature and cross-disciplinary expert discussion. RESULTS: A situation-aware ICT requires a flexible fine-tuning by stakeholders of system usability and complexity of function, and of user safety and autonomy. It should operate by artificial intelligence/machine learning and should reflect harmonized stakeholder values, social context, and user residual cognitive functions. ICT services should be proposed at the prodromal stage of dementia and should be carefully validated within the life space of users in terms of quality of life, social activities, and costs. DISCUSSION: The operational framework has the potential to produce ICT and services with high clinical impact but requires substantial investment

Business Owner-Managers’ Job Autonomy and Job Satisfaction: Up, Down or No Change?

KingdomThe current study developed a dynamic model which identified a pattern of change in small business owner-managers’ job autonomy and job satisfaction separately through the trend analyses (linear, quadratic, and cubic trends). The current study then tested the associations between the growth models of job autonomy and job satisfaction. The study utilized data from an Australian sample over 9 years with a total sample of 1,044 self-employed individuals. In brief, the findings illustrate a curvilinear relationship (cubic and non-monotonic) between changes in job autonomy and job satisfaction. Further, the change rate of job satisfaction was faster among small business owner-managers who perceived greater fluctuation of job autonomy, compared to those who perceived lesser shifts in job autonomy