53,650 research outputs found

    Coaching through technology: a systematic review into efficacy and effectiveness for the ageing population

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    Background: Despite the evidence on the positive role of self-management, the adoption ofhealth coaching strategies for older people is still limited. To address these gaps, recent efforts havebeen made in the ICT sector in order to develop systems for delivering coaching and overcomingbarriers relating to scarcity of resources. The aim of this review is to examine the efficacy of personalhealth coaching systems for older adults using digital virtual agents.Methods: A systematic reviewof the literature was conducted in December 2019 analyzing manuscripts from four databases overthe last 10 years. Nine papers were included.Results: Despite the low number of studies, there wasevidence that technology-integrated interventions can deliver benefits for health over usual care.However, the review raises important questions about how to maintain benefits and permanence ofbehavior change produced by short-term interventions.Conclusion: These systems offer a potentialtool to reduce costs, minimize therapist burden and training, and expand the range of clients who canbenefit from them. It is desirable that in the future the number of studies will grow, considering otheraspects such as the role of the virtual coaches’ characteristics, social-presence, empathy, usability,and health literac

    Leading in the digital age: A systematic review on leader traits in the context of e-leadership

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    Due to the rapid changes in work environments caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, leadership has shifted from face-to-face to virtual contexts. Accordingly, the new challenges require specific e-leader traits. To summarize the divergent scholarly discussion, we conducted a systematic review and identified distal (i.e., personality, cognitive abilities, motives and attitudes, and core beliefs) and proximal (i.e., skills) attributes of e-leaders. Our results show that some traditional leader traits such as technological, communication, motivational, and organizational skills are also important for e-leadership. However, certain traits become increasingly important in virtual contexts: e-leaders need adaptability and risk- taking to deal with constant change, and higher cultural, social, and emotional intelligence to foster collaboration in diversified teams. In addition, digital technologies require particular change management, coaching, and trust-building skills. Our findings contribute to the current discussion on e-leadership and help practitioners train their leaders towards the identified e-leader profile

    CoachAI: A Conversational Agent Assisted Health Coaching Platform

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    Poor lifestyle represents a health risk factor and is the leading cause of morbidity and chronic conditions. The impact of poor lifestyle can be significantly altered by individual behavior change. Although the current shift in healthcare towards a long lasting modifiable behavior, however, with increasing caregiver workload and individuals' continuous needs of care, there is a need to ease caregiver's work while ensuring continuous interaction with users. This paper describes the design and validation of CoachAI, a conversational agent assisted health coaching system to support health intervention delivery to individuals and groups. CoachAI instantiates a text based healthcare chatbot system that bridges the remote human coach and the users. This research provides three main contributions to the preventive healthcare and healthy lifestyle promotion: (1) it presents the conversational agent to aid the caregiver; (2) it aims to decrease caregiver's workload and enhance care given to users, by handling (automating) repetitive caregiver tasks; and (3) it presents a domain independent mobile health conversational agent for health intervention delivery. We will discuss our approach and analyze the results of a one month validation study on physical activity, healthy diet and stress management

    Reviews

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    P. Race, 500 Tips on Group Learning, London: Kogan Page, 2000. ISBN: 0–7494–2884–8. Softback, vii + 135 pages, £15.99

    Work Organisation and Innovation - Case Study: Rabobank, Netherlands

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    [Excerpt] Rabobank Nederland (RN) is part of Rabobank Group, which provides financial services and insurance. It is the largest financial services provider in the Netherlands. The group operates in 47 countries and has an employee base of 59,670 full-time equivalents (FTE). In the Netherlands RN has an employee base of 6,800 FTE, which is more or less equal to 8,500 employees. RN is a cooperative, located in Utrecht, and the administrative centre for 139 (2011) local cooperative Rabobanks. The local banks are not branches of RN as each of them has its own banking licence from the central Nederlandsche Bank. The joint employee base of the local Rabobanks is 27,000 FTE. The 139 local Rabobanks, RN and affiliates, provide services to some 10 million clients, including 1.9 million members (Rabobank Annual Report, 2011)

    Health Coaching Case Report: Optimizing Employee Health and Wellbeing in Organizations

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    Abstract Health and wellbeing of employees has a direct correlation to organizational performance. It is essential that organizations and successful leaders prioritize the health and wellbeing of all employees – from the C-suite to entry level positions. As rates of stress, chronic illness, and unhealthy lifestyle choices continue to increase, it is imperative that organizations discover strategies that cultivate employee wellbeing. Employees with high wellbeing are more engaged, productive, and energized and directly affect a company’s bottom line; it is in the best interest of employers to invest in human capital and wellbeing of employees. Health and wellness coaching demonstrates encouraging potential as a cost-effective catalyst to optimize employee wellbeing. Rooted in science-based research with the foundation in relationships, communication, and connection, health coaches partner with employees as they build self-awareness around a holistic view of health. As employees build self-awareness, they increasingly recognize the importance of managing stress and self-care, connecting to their vision and values, taking active steps towards change, and addressing barriers and obstacles. With these strategies, individuals build resilience as they gain energy, empowerment, and work towards positive growth. This paper outlines the challenges that leaders and employees are facing, describes the intervention of health and wellness coaching, and provides a group coaching case study that demonstrates how health and wellness coaching can foster employee wellbeing. This case study provides evidence that health coaching shows promise as an intervention to optimize employee health and wellbeing. Keywords: employee health and wellbeing, wellness, stress management, health and wellness coaching, group coaching, leader wellbeing, self-awareness, case repor

    Technology business incubators as engines of growth: towards a distinction between technology incubators and non-technology incubators

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    Business incubators are an increasingly popular tool for promoting job and wealth creation. Yet given the heterogeneity of incubation models, it is not always clear how incubators operate, what their main characteristics are and how can they best contribute to job and wealth creation. If technology is central in promoting economic growth and new firm creation the crucial mechanism in transferring new knowledge to markets, then technology incubators have the biggest potential to contribute to economic growth. We define technology incubators by their strategic choices in terms of mission, linkages to universities and geographical location. We investigate their nature by comparing the levels of business services provision, selection criteria, exit policy and tenants’ characteristics. Our sample includes 12 incubators located in six Northwestern European countries and a total of 101 incubated companies. Data were collected in both incubators and among their tenants. Results show that technology incubators provide more tenants with their services, select younger companies and practice stricter exit policies. Additionally, they tend to attract more experienced teams of entrepreneurs. Our main contribution is a better understanding of the technology incubators impact against the remainder population of business incubators. We speculate that incubators not focussed in incubating technology might not be contributing to company creation at all. Further, the low levels of service provision are both a product and a consequence of slack selection criteria and weak exit policies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings to business incubator managers, policy makers and prospective tenants
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