What Should be in Place to Assess the Effectiveness or Return on Investment of a Company\u27s Leadership Development Programs?

[Excerpt] Leadership is vital to a company’s bottom line, yet only 41% of C-suite leaders believe that their organizations’ leadership development programs (LDP) are of high or very high quality. However, only 18% of companies are gathering relevant business impact metrics, key determinants for measuring a program’s effectiveness and ROI. Many organizations focus on the Kirkpatrick model--reaction, learning, behavior, and results--to evaluate learning, it is critical to extend this framework to include return-on-investment. This focus on operational and strategic metrics that will drive results for the business and individual to accurately measure LDPs spanning the entry and executive levels to focus on relevant indicators

Conservation of adaptive genetic diversity : insights & challenges(Sustainable Yield and Population Conservation for Marine Organisms from the Point of View of Genetic Resources,International Workshop in Faculty of Agricultural Science and Field Science Center in Tohoku University 2008)

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From Thatcher to May: framing the evolution of British Euroscepticism until Brexit

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4684018*es

How to Best Engage and Excite All Employees about HR System and Process Changes?

[Excerpt] Change is a phenomenon that is vital for growth and is constant in all settings. In the context of business, organizations continually change their strategies, culture, structure and processes in response to markets, technological advancements, and legislation. A recent study highlighted that 90% of change management programs fail, largely due to employee resistance and the lack of management support. However, when employees, human resources (HR) professionals and leadership are invested in change, it is 30% more likely to succeed. Therefore, everyone in the organization holds the responsibility to manage change with transparency and communication

How Do Companies Integrate and Adapt to the HR Business Partner Organizational Model?

[Excerpt] Current HR structural models focus on three elements: HR Business Partners (HRBP), Centers of Excellence (CoE), and HR Shared Services. Since David Ulrich’s 1997 Human Resource Champions, HR leaders across various industries have begun realigning HR organizations to undertake “strategic business partner” work. To integrate the HRBP Model, they must work to find the most effective role of HR within the business unit to support the transformation process and create strategic alignment. With the rapid change of business, there is a need for HR leadership to also examine their existing HR organizational models in order to support business initiatives and people strategy

Cross-generational costs of compensatory growth in nine-spined sticklebacks

Compensatory growth (CG) is a form of phenotypic plasticity allowing individuals’ growth trajectories to rebound after a period of resource limitation, but little is known about the reproductive and cross-generational costs of CG. We studied the potential costs of CG by exposing female nine-spined sticklebacks Pungitius pungitius to 1) high (favourable), 2) low (stressful), and 3) recovery (initially stressful, subsequently favourable) feeding treatments, and quantified the effects of these treatments on female reproductive traits (clutch, egg and yolk size), and on the size of their offspring. The low feeding treatment reduced female size relative to the high and recovery feeding treatments, which produced equally large females. Hence, females from the recovery treatment demonstrated CG and full growth compensation. Feeding treatments had significant effects on clutch, yolk, egg and larval size, also when the effect of female size was controlled for. However, these effects came about mostly because females from the low feeding treatment produced small clutches with large eggs (containing little yolk) and larvae, whereas females from the recovery feeding treatment produced as large clutches, eggs (with similar amounts of yolk) and larvae as females from the high feeding treatment. Yet, structural equation modelling revealed that while a direct effect of female size on offspring size was positive in the low and high feeding treatments, it was negative in the recovery feeding treatment, independently of egg and clutch size. This indicates a cross-generational tradeoff between female and offspring sizes in the recovery feeding treatment. Also the tradeoff between clutch and larval size was more pronounced in recovery than in low or high feeding treatments. Hence, apart from demonstrating that environmental influences experienced by females during their development have the potential to influence their size, fecundity and reproductive traits, the results also provide evidence for complex cross-generational costs of recovery growth

Täpsus- ja soravusharjutuste kasutamine kõnelemisoskuse arendamisel 4.-6. klasside inglise keele tundides

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2611039~S1*es

FishResp : R package and GUI application for analysis of aquatic respirometry data

FishResp is a user-friendly tool for calculating oxygen uptake of aquatic organisms. The aim of the software is to improve the quality of metabolic rate estimates based on a straightforward pipeline: background respiration correction, detection of mechanical problems, conduction of QC tests, and filtration based on user-defined criteria. Abstract Intermittent-flow respirometry is widely used to measure oxygen uptake rates and subsequently estimate aerobic metabolic rates of aquatic animals. However, the lack of a standard quality-control software to detect technical problems represents a potential impediment to comparisons across studies in the field of evolutionary and conservation physiology. Here, we introduce FishResp', a versatile R package and its graphical implementation for quality-control and filtering of raw respirometry data. Our goal is to provide a straightforward, cross-platform and free software to help improve the quality and comparability of metabolic rate estimates for reducing methodological fragmentation in the field of aquatic respirometry. FishResp accepts data from various respirometry systems, allows users to detect potential mechanical problems which can occur during oxygen uptake measurements (e.g. chamber leaking, poor water circulation), and offers six options to correct raw data for microbial oxygen consumption. The software performs filtering of raw data based on user criteria, and produces accurate and unbiased estimates of absolute and mass-specific metabolic rates. Using data from three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata), we demonstrate the virtues of FishResp, highlighting the importance of detecting mechanical problems and correcting measurements for background respiration.Peer reviewe

Iseteenindustehnoloogiate kasutamise kogemused ja motivatsioon noorte kasutajate näitel

The purpose of the following bachelor thesis „The usage and motivation of self-service technologies among young people“ was to study the usage practices of self-service technologies. Furthermore, the aim was also to find out the main reasons why self-service technologies are used and how consumers define their roles during the consumption. In the first chapter I will give an overview of the self-service technologies, while relying mostly on the theory of Meuteri et al (2005, 2000), Parasuraman (2000), Collier & Sherrell (2010) and Dabholkar & Bagozzi (2002). The second chapter introduces method and the sample. In the third chapter I will analyze results and in the final discussion chapter I will present results. In the empirical part of the thesis 10 semi-structured interviews were carried out with users of different self-service tehnologies. At first I studied the genereal experiences and focused on this how consumer experience has changed because of self-service technologies. Since young people were interviewed, technology adaption was not a problem. Meanwhile, when problems had occured, assistance from personnel was needed. Consumers also expected services to be available 24/7. Secondly, motivation and the reasons of self-service usage was studied. According to the results, self-service technologies are being used because of three main motivations dimensions: time, control and dependence. Convenience and speed of transaction were also mentioned. Independence turned out to be quit important motivator – it was possible to use self-service anywhere and anytime. Thirdly, co-creation was studied and as a result interviewees believed that their role during the service was minimal. Also, they were ready to take responsibility when they made a mistake. Obviously, when technology failed or some other problem occured, they did not take responsibility. In conclusion, it is important to notice that users were so used to the self-services around them that they did not notice how much they actually used self-services. While the advantages of self-services were clear to users, the understanding of their role as a co-creator was not. So there is still lot to be done in this area – to get better service experiences, users should understand their role. Also, companies should pay more attention to the role of consumer.http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2610775~S1*es

Environmental enrichment, sexual dimorphism, and brain size in sticklebacks

Evidence for phenotypic plasticity in brain size and the size of different brain parts is widespread, but experimental investigations into this effect remain scarce and are usually conducted using individuals from a single population. As the costs and benefits of plasticity may differ among populations, the extent of brain plasticity may also differ from one population to another. In a common garden experiment conducted with three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) originating from four different populations, we investigated whether environmental enrichment (aquaria provided with structural complexity) caused an increase in the brain size or size of different brain parts compared to controls (bare aquaria). We found no evidence for a positive effect of environmental enrichment on brain size or size of different brain parts in either of the sexes in any of the populations. However, in all populations, males had larger brains than females, and the degree of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in relative brain size ranged from 5.1 to 11.6% across the populations. Evidence was also found for genetically based differences in relative brain size among populations, as well as for plasticity in the size of different brain parts, as evidenced by consistent size differences among replicate blocks that differed in their temperature.Peer reviewe