Organizational Climate as Performance Driver: Health Care Workers’ Perception in a Large Hospital

Recently health care (HC) organizations have increasingly embarked on organizational climate (OC) assessment with the intent to improve their efficiency and the quality of the delivered services. This is important; however, it is even if more crucial to ensure that workers engaged in the evaluation process are aware of the importance of their fruitful engagement in this investigation as well as of its potential benefits. From the management viewpoint, this is crucial to plan and implement management initiatives able to create a great place to work. The purpose of this paper is to shed empirical light on how, in effect, HC workers perceive OC for itself and as a performance driver to assess and manage. The study was carried out through an action research (AR) project, which included the use of both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Key phases of the AR project were some focus groups and a survey. During the focus groups, several methods and approaches were adopted for getting opinions from people and animating discussion. About the survey, a total sample of 560 HC workers was investigated. The AR project has shown that even if HC workers intuitively conceive OC as an important performance driver, the meaning of the construct is not completely clear. Moreover, a good level of awareness among HC workers about how and why OC can improve individual and organizational performance represents a key issue to address in evaluating and managing OC

Baogang He, Micheal Breen and James Fishkin (2022), Deliberative Democracy in Asia, New York: Routledge

This article reviews Deliberative Democracy in Asia, a book published in 2022 by Routledge and edited by Baogang He, Micheal Breen and James Fishkin. The review is divided into four sections: a short introduction about deliberative democracy, an analysis of the structure of the book, an investigation of the most important topics addressed in the work and a conclusion, stating whether the book is worth reading or not, and why. Throughout the review, of course, the strengths and the weaknesses of the book are underlined. The former particularly relate to the contents of the book and to some aspects of its structure, while the latter specially concern the work's comparative approach, which looks a bit weaker than expected

Creating an environment for free education and technology-enhanced learning

The purpose of this paper is to present a project aimed at making knowledge publically available through opene ducational resources (OER). The focus is on open online courses which will be created by educational institutions and best practice examples offered by leading companies, with the purpose to support life-long education and enhancement of academic education with practical knowledge. The goal is to create diverse high quality educational materials in electronic format, which will be publically available. The educational material will follow basic pedagogical-didactic principles, in order to best meet the needs of the potential learners. In accordance with that a review of didactic principles that can contribute to producing OER content of excellence is given. The choice of a convenient platform, as well as the application of appropriate information technologies enable content representation in a suitable, innovative and meaningful way

Using metadata for content indexing within an OER network

This paper outlines the ICT solution for a metadata portal indexing open educational resources within a network of institutions. The network is aimed at blending academic and entrepreneurial knowledge,by enabling higher education institutions to publish various academic learning resources e.g. video lectures, course planning materials, or thematic content, whereasenterprises can present different forms of expert knowledge, such as case studies, expert presentations on specific topics, demonstrations of software implementation in practice and the like. As these resources need to bediscoverable, accessible and shared by potential learners across the learning environment, it is very important that they are well described and tagged in a standard way in machine readable form by metadata. Only then can they be successfully used and reused, especially when a large amount of these resources is reached, which makes it hard for the user to locate efficiently those of interest. The metadata set adopted in our approach relies on two standards: Dublin Core and Learning Object Metadata. The aim of metadata and the corresponding metadata portal described in this paper is to provide structured access to information on open educational resources within the network

Nuevas edades del volcanismo Jurásico Inferior de la cuenca Neuquina en la dorsal de Huincul

New single zircon ages from hydrocarbon well cores in the A-1 Norte de la Dorsal and Anticlinal Campamento area of the Neuquén basin indicate that 199.0 ± 1.5 Ma andesite lava flow and 203.75 ± 0.26 Ma dacite breccia overlie a 286.5 ± 2.3 Ma granodiorite and 284.0 ± 1.3 Ma andesite dike. The Lower Jurassic volcanics were deposited on a regional erosion surface affecting the Permian rocks. In the studied area there is no record of Middle to Upper Triassic volcanics as in other areas of the basin. Exotic zircon crystals gave ages of Mesoproterozoic, Middle Cambian, Early Devonian and Early Carboniferous, suggesting a poliphasic basement. Chemical analyses of three selected samples show a calc-alkaline signature, supporting the existence of a volcanic arc at the Early Jurassic as it has been proposed for the center of the basin.Se dan nuevas edades U/Pb en cristales únicos de circón de muestras de corona de pozos exploratorios en el área petrolera A-1 Norte de la Dorsal y Anticlinal Campamento de la cuenca Neuquina. Estas edades permiten acotar un volcanismo Jurásico Inferior apoyado directamente sobre un basamento ígneo del Pérmico Inferior. Una muestra de andesita arrojó una edad de 199,0 ± 1,5 Ma y una de dacita 203,75 ± 0,26 Ma. El basamento está constituido por una granodiorita de 286,5 ± 2,3 Ma intruida por diques de andesita con 284,0 ± 1,3 Ma, ambas rocas están cortadas por una superficie de erosión de carácter regional labrada durante el Triásico, posiblemente Medio. En las perforaciones estudiadas no se han encontrado rocas triásicas. Los circones exóticos hallados indican la existencia de un complejo basamento con edades del Mesoproterozoico, Cámbrico Medio, Devónico Temprano y Carbonífero Temprano. Los análisis químicos muestras una filiación calco-alcalina que apoya la hipótesis de la existencia de un arco volcánico Jurásico Temprano en el centro de la cuenca NeuquinaCentro de Investigaciones Geológica

Nuevas edades del volcanismo Jurásico Inferior de la cuenca Neuquina en la dorsal de Huincul

New single zircon ages from hydrocarbon well cores in the A-1 Norte de la Dorsal and Anticlinal Campamento area of the Neuquén basin indicate that 199.0 ± 1.5 Ma andesite lava flow and 203.75 ± 0.26 Ma dacite breccia overlie a 286.5 ± 2.3 Ma granodiorite and 284.0 ± 1.3 Ma andesite dike. The Lower Jurassic volcanics were deposited on a regional erosion surface affecting the Permian rocks. In the studied area there is no record of Middle to Upper Triassic volcanics as in other areas of the basin. Exotic zircon crystals gave ages of Mesoproterozoic, Middle Cambian, Early Devonian and Early Carboniferous, suggesting a poliphasic basement. Chemical analyses of three selected samples show a calc-alkaline signature, supporting the existence of a volcanic arc at the Early Jurassic as it has been proposed for the center of the basin.Se dan nuevas edades U/Pb en cristales únicos de circón de muestras de corona de pozos exploratorios en el área petrolera A-1 Norte de la Dorsal y Anticlinal Campamento de la cuenca Neuquina. Estas edades permiten acotar un volcanismo Jurásico Inferior apoyado directamente sobre un basamento ígneo del Pérmico Inferior. Una muestra de andesita arrojó una edad de 199,0 ± 1,5 Ma y una de dacita 203,75 ± 0,26 Ma. El basamento está constituido por una granodiorita de 286,5 ± 2,3 Ma intruida por diques de andesita con 284,0 ± 1,3 Ma, ambas rocas están cortadas por una superficie de erosión de carácter regional labrada durante el Triásico, posiblemente Medio. En las perforaciones estudiadas no se han encontrado rocas triásicas. Los circones exóticos hallados indican la existencia de un complejo basamento con edades del Mesoproterozoico, Cámbrico Medio, Devónico Temprano y Carbonífero Temprano. Los análisis químicos muestras una filiación calco-alcalina que apoya la hipótesis de la existencia de un arco volcánico Jurásico Temprano en el centro de la cuenca NeuquinaCentro de Investigaciones Geológica

Knowledge and Management Models for Sustainable Growth

In the last years sustainability has become a topic of global concern and a key issue in the strategic agenda of both business organizations and public authorities and organisations. Significant changes in business landscape, the emergence of new technology, including social media, the pressure of new social concerns, have called into question established conceptualizations of competitiveness, wealth creation and growth. New and unaddressed set of issues regarding how private and public organisations manage and invest their resources to create sustainable value have brought to light. In particular the increasing focus on environmental and social themes has suggested new dimensions to be taken into account in the value creation dynamics, both at organisations and communities level. For companies the need of integrating corporate social and environmental responsibility issues into strategy and daily business operations, pose profound challenges, which, in turn, involve numerous processes and complex decisions influenced by many stakeholders. Facing these challenges calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge as well as the development of proper management models, approaches and tools aimed to contribute to the development and realization of environmentally and socially sustainable business strategies and practices