Key factors in encouraging and empowering undergraduates to practice service leadership through extra-curricular service-learning practicums

While internships bridge students\u27 academic major to the world of work, in this paper, we focus on practicums as vehicles for service leadership development. In the summers of 2013 and 2014, Lingnan University arranged 28 full-time practicums in 13 partner organizations, mainly not-for-profit organizations or social enterprises, for students with prior service-learning experience. Practicums lasted 6 weeks in 2013, and 8 weeks in 2014. Students attended a 3-hour preparatory workshop on service leadership, and an interim review meeting. Through interviews with 26 practicum students and site supervisors from 13 partner organizations, we identified three factors that enabled practicum students to develop as service leaders. The first factor was the availability of practicum tasks that required innovation to identify and meet hitherto unmet needs. Successful practicums allowed students to create or extend events or arrangements that made a clear difference to the achievement of the social mission of their respective host organizations. Students were empowered to initiate responsibility for service planning, organization and delivery, including the need to anticipate and respond to end -user contingencies and demands. The second broad factor was the availability of a supportive site supervisor, willing and able to provide timely briefings, guidance, coaching and feedback. The third factor was the developmental readiness of the practicum student. Developmentally -ready students were psychologically prepared to seek out new challenges, cared about both end-user service-recipients and other stakeholders, were committed to making a difference, and had sufficient skills, knowledge, and self-confidence to work things out independently and arrive at their own decisions. They found effective ways to approach their site supervisor whenever necessary, and by demonstrating their competence and integrity, they were able to build trust. We highlight four cases, which reveal differences between traditional internships and the innovation -oriented nature of successful service leadership practicums. The first features a supportive site supervisor and two developmentally-ready practicum students. The second involves a moderately-supportive site supervisor, one developmentally-ready practicum student, and one moderately-ready practicum student. The third features a supportive site supervisor, one developmentally-ready practicum student, and one moderately-ready practicum student. The fourth involves a less-supportive site supervisor and a less-ready practicum student

A hierarchical model for eco-design of consumer electronic products

Designing environmentally friendly products has become a tighter requirement in the marketplace because of both the increasing trend in awareness of consumers and the obligations from legislation requirements. Unfortunately, this is not a straight forward decision for designers to evaluate whether their design options are satisfactory in terms of balancing various factors (for examples, different forms of environmental assessment) or not. This is partly attributed to the fact that there is no universally accepted approach for conducting such analysis. In this connection, this research makes reference to a European Union (EU) directive as a reference model and makes use of Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP), which is a useful tool to help designers to make decision, for evaluating eco-design options. The AHP model is developed based on two case studies on consumer electronic products. Pairwise comparisons, one of the key steps in AHP, are conducted with the expertise gained from the case studies and the help from the software package Expert Choice. The paper also reveals how design options can be evaluated, or be screened out. The proposed method does not require the designers to conduct detailed analysis (life-cycle assessment for example) for every new product options and hence can save their time. This is particularly important when they are facing shorter and shorter product life cycle nowadays. First published online: 18 Jun 201

A handbook for using elder academy as a platform of other learning experiences

This handbook will discuss how school syllabus, Other Learning Experiences (OLE) and Elder Academy (EA) can be integrated. It will provide some structures for schools as a reference and help develop a comprehensive learning plan. Besides, the handbook will mention different roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, as well as the suggestions and guidelines for assessment. The programs and activities in the “Elder Academy at Lingnan” will be taken as examples to demonstrate the guidelines. This can provide a better understanding of the operation mode of the integration between school curricula, OLE and EA. Hence, interested stakeholders can perform their own plans more systematically and effectively.https://commons.ln.edu.hk/osl_book/1000/thumbnail.jp

Strategic sourcing supplier selection misalignment with critical success factors:findings from multiple case studies in Germany and the United Kingdom

Strategic sourcing plays an important role in organisations' performance. Strategic sourcing has been researched extensively using empirical studies as well as review work, such as strategic sourcing importance, issues and challenges, processes, source selection criteria and framework. However, there is no research on critical success factors for strategic sourcing specific to industry and country. This research aims to qualitatively evaluate and understand the current role of strategic sourcing, the critical success factors for business performance and its relationship with strategic sourcing, and strategic supplier evaluation criteria from multiple stakeholders' perspectives specific to industry and country. This research studies twenty organisations from Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) covering two industry sectors - electronics manufacturing and construction. We consider five organisations from each industry sector and each country. The findings from twenty case studies reveal comparative analysis of strategic sourcing practices of two countries and two industries

A business model perspective for ICTs in public engagement

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published article can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ElsevierPublic institutions, in their efforts to promote meaningful citizen engagement, are increasingly looking at the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Previous studies suggest that such initiatives seem to be impeded by socio-technical integration barriers such as low sustainability, poor citizen acceptance, coordination difficulties, lack of understanding and failure to assess their impact. Motivated by these shortcomings, the paper develops and applies a business model perspective as an interceding framework for analysis and evaluation. The underlying principle behind this approach is that it is not technology per se which determines success, but rather the way in which the businessmodel of the technological artifact is configured and employed to achieve the strategic goals. The business model perspective is empirically demonstrated with the case of an online petitioning system implemented by a UK local authority. The case illustrates the importance of considering ICTs in public engagement from a holistic view to make them more manageable and assessable

Non-A Hepatitis B Virus Genotypes in Antenatal Clinics, United Kingdom

Serostatus for viral e antigen is no longer accurate for inferring potential infectivity of pregnant virus carriers

Changes in hepatitis B virus DNA levels and liver function after transcatheter arterial chemoembolization of hepatocellular carcinoma

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86805/1/j.1872-034X.2011.00796.x.pd