Public Service motivation for executive pension trustees: A qualitative study

The purpose of this paper is to establish if there is an element of public service motivation (PSM) in pension trustee roles that extend across public and private boundaries in the UK. The qualitative research indicates that public service is a requirement to enhance social commitment to this executive role but that this is also influenced by the organisational and political context of the trustee representation as employer or employee representatives. The research highlights the multiple motives that encourage trustee participation but also how these can be changed through socialisation within this role utilising element of organisational citizenship and user orientation to serving and helping pension plan members. It is suggested that an orientation to public service should be made explicit in the recruitment process, induction and training of trustees

An integrative model of the management of hospital physician relationships

Hospital Physician Relationships (HPRs) are of major importance to the health care sector. Drawing on agency theory and social exchange theory, we argue that both economic and noneconomic integration strategies are important to effective management of HPRs. We developed a model of related antecedents and outcomes and conducted a systematic review to assess the evidence base of both integration strategies and their interplay. We found that more emphasis should be placed on financial risk sharing, trust and physician organizational commitment

‘Useful, usable and used’: Sustaining an Australian model of cross-faculty service learning by concentrating on shared value creation

In recent decades, partnerships between community-based organisations and universities through service-learning programs have proliferated, reflected in an equally energetic growth in the research literature on process, evaluation, benefits and lessons learned. As an example of student experiential education through community engagement, service learning’s potential to contribute to students, community partners and the university is well recognised, although the research has tended to focus on benefits to students rather than the value in engagement for the community sector. UTS Shopfront Community Program is a cross-university initiative that has successfully facilitated curricular service learning in multiple disciplines for 20 years at an Australian university, leading to the completion of more than 1000 community projects. In examining this program, this article aims to describe both a sustainable, generative partnership model for creating shared value and, through analysis of 10 years of evaluation data, define what value is created for community partners and students through this project work. Key components in enabling a shared-value approach include: community-initiated projects based on need; a dedicated cross-university program and an assigned project coordinator; the engagement of faculty expertise through students with developed skills in appropriately structured courses; and community ownership of outcomes. Ongoing challenges include: scoping ‘student-ready’ briefs; managing risk, commitment and workload; designing coursework structures to deliver shared value; and achieving the ‘Holy Grail’ of transdisciplinarity

Transformational government and assistive web base technologies

Transformational government has been on the European agenda for several years. However, progress towards realising the full potential of ICT to transform public services for older adults with age related cognitive impairments has been very limited. Highlighting such limitations this paper demonstrates how assistive web base technologies can be developed to improve the public services for older adults with age related cognitive impairments. However the paper argues that these transformations can be obstructed if there is no strong leadership and political commitment from people at many levels in public sectors and governments

The effects of a mindfulness-based program on the incidence of injuries in young male soccer players

We tested the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based program in reducing sport injury incidence. 168 young male elite soccer players were randomly assigned to mindfulness (MG) and control (CG) groups. The MG consisted of 7 sessions based on the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment approach while the CG consisted of 7 presentations on sport injury psychology. Athlete-exposure and injury data were recorded during one season. State and trait mindfulness, sport anxiety, stress, and attention control of participants were assessed. Number of injuries, average of injuries per team, and days lost to injury in the MG weresignificantly lower than in the CG. Mindfulness and attention control werelower and sport anxiety and stress were higher in injured players than innon-injured players. Psychological variables were associated with injury. Mindfulness training may reduce the injury risk of young soccer players due to improved mindfulness and attention control and reduced sport anxiety

Patterns, Information, and Causation

This paper articulates an account of causation as a collection of information-theoretic relationships between patterns instantiated in the causal nexus. I draw on Dennett’s account of real patterns to characterize potential causal relata as patterns with specific identification criteria and noise tolerance levels, and actual causal relata as those patterns instantiated at some spatiotemporal location in the rich causal nexus as originally developed by Salmon. I develop a representation framework using phase space to precisely characterize causal relata, including their degree of counterfactual robustness, causal profiles, causal connectivity, and privileged grain size. By doing so, I show how the philosophical notion of causation can be rendered in a format that is amenable for direct application of mathematical techniques from information theory such that the resulting informational measures are causal informational measures. This account provides a metaphysics of causation that supports interventionist semantics and causal modeling and discovery techniques

The Propensity To Continue Service Internationalization - A Model Of Planned Behavior

The present study investigates the propensity to continue internationalization by experienced international service providers. Enhancing the cognitive-behavioral root of internationalization process theory (Johanson and Vahlne 1977; 1990), this paper builds upon Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior. Consistent with the latter theory, the propensity to continue service internationalization is modelled as behavioral intention that results from (1) an overall attitude towards internationalization, (2) structural and strategic behavioral norms, and (3) inhibiting factors that exert behavioral control upon propensity. Using partial least squares analysis, a propensity model is tested on a sample of 193 international service providers. The results suggest that our model explicates and enhances the cognitive/affective character of internationalization process theory.management and organization theory ;

Communication strategy tool user guide

The application of Cradle to Cradle (C2C) principles in business sites is likely to be hampered by several barriers, some of which are socio-cultural in nature. To promote change and new thinking in the way business sites are designed, built and operated, there is the need to properly understand socio-cultural issues that create ‘lock-in’ to existing practices (Peterson and Anderson, 2009) so that these can be taken into account in the way C2C is presented to different business site stakeholders to secure their commitment to C2C inspired projects. These socio-cultural barriers are deeply rooted in the basic assumptions and value priorities of stakeholders. Strategies for communicating and promoting the C2C vision must therefore be aligned with such stakeholder value priorities and assumptions

Measuring time preferences

We review research that measures time preferences—i.e., preferences over intertemporal tradeoffs. We distinguish between studies using financial flows, which we call “money earlier or later” (MEL) decisions and studies that use time-dated consumption/effort. Under different structural models, we show how to translate what MEL experiments directly measure (required rates of return for financial flows) into a discount function over utils. We summarize empirical regularities found in MEL studies and the predictive power of those studies. We explain why MEL choices are driven in part by some factors that are distinct from underlying time preferences.National Institutes of Health (NIA R01AG021650 and P01AG005842) and the Pershing Square Fund for Research in the Foundations of Human Behavior