Leadership then at all events

Theory purporting to identify leadership remains over-determined by one of two underlying fallacies. Traditionally, it hypostatizes leadership in psychological terms so that it appears as the collection of attributes belonging to an independent, discrete person. By contrast, contemporary perspectives approach leadership by focusing on the intermediary relations between leaders and followers. We retreat from both of these conceptions. Our approach perceives these terms as continuous within each other and not merely as adjacent individuals. The upshot is that leadership should be understood as a more fundamental type of relatedness, one that is glimpsed in the active process we are here calling events. We suggest further work consistent with these ideas offers an innovative and useful line of inquiry, both by extending our theoretical understanding of leadership, but also because of the empirical challenges such a study invites.

A European unemployment benefits scheme: Lessons from Canada. CEPS Working Document No. 2017-02 / January 2017

In many federal political systems, responsibility for unemployment has a multi-tiered architecture, with competence for key elements − including unemployment insurance, social assistance, and the public employment service − dispersed across different orders of government. This paper tells the story of the long transformation of unemployment insurance into a federal responsibility in Canada, and seeks to identify lessons from Canada’s experience that might be useful as Europeans consider the potential of an EU-wide unemployment benefits scheme in response to the financial and euro crisis that started in 2008. Most European scholars look to the United States for transferable ideas. I argue that Canada is a more salient comparator, given that it has similar institutional features to the EU, and has successfully managed a pan-Canadian unemployment insurance benefits scheme for over 75 years. Lessons for the EU from Canada include the place of a centrally managed unemployment insurance programme in a monetary union, and insights with respect to stabilisation, labour mobility, redistribution, social solidarity, legitimacy, and institutional moral hazard

Social Construction of Appropriate Use of Enterprise Social Media

Increasingly companies and governments are turning to enterprise versions of social software to accomplish organizational goals. Unlike public social media, access to Enterprise Social Media (ESM) is normally restricted to the organization or key strategic partners. We know from research on Information Technology (IT) value, that not only is system use necessary to achieve value, but also that this use must be appropriate. System use and specifically appropriate use has received very little attention in the literature. The nature of ESM tools and the absence of specific and detailed use guidelines creates an environment where employees are encouraged to explore means to achieve value. Thus, employees invoke a dynamic and interactive process to socially construct appropriate use. This paper draws on previous research on IT value, and legitimacy to propose a conceptual model to guide future research on how appropriate use of enterprise social media is socially constructed

Does Faculty Student Mentoring Improve Program Performance and Mediate Stress for First-Year Dental Hygiene Students?

Dental hygiene education requires students to connect classroom learning with patient care very early in the scholastic process. This challenge can be a considerable source of stress for first-year students who are disproportionately, compared to second year students, at-risk for dropping out. In student surveys, first-year dental hygiene students routinely highlight a need for an improved support system when navigating through their degree programs. Although scholars have theorized that faculty-student mentoring may provide critical support for students in health care programs, little empirical research has tested these relationships. A quantitative method was utilized, surveying 472 first-year dental hygiene students during their first year of the program to gain a better understanding of the faculty-student mentoring programs and the role they play in supporting student stress, clinical competence and academic improvement. A pilot tested survey was administered to students after the completion of the first semester of their dental hygiene education but before the termination of the second semester. Results from this study provide evidence regarding factors associated with the effects of the mentoring on program success for the first-year dental hygiene students. This study will add to the body of knowledge that dental hygiene academic programs may reference when investigating the possible benefits of faculty-student mentoring

Workability of intergovernmental administrative relations: a comparison of labour market policy in post-devolution Canada and the United Kingdom

This is a comparative study of intergovernmental relations in labour market policy in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) between 1996 and 2006, the first phase of devolution in each country. The study focuses primarily on relations between the central government and a single sub-state in each country (Alberta in Canada and Scotland in the UK) and addresses three research questions: 1) to what extent were there differences in intergovernmental relations between the countries?2) what accounted for these differences? 3) what impact did these differences have on the character and workability of the intergovernmental relations system in each country? Workability was assessed based upon the degree to which trust ties developed between senior officials. The analysis concludes that the structure of the state, the structure of the policy domain, and the presence of two important accommodation mechanisms in the UK not found in Canada (the party system and the civil service) made intergovernmental relations in labour market policy in the two countries fundamentally different. In Canada, intergovernmental relations were multilateral, interprovincial and bilateral, whereas in the United Kingdom they were only bilateral. Despite devolution, the UK Government retained control of most policy levers, whereas in Canada devolution has limited federal control and influence and any notion of a national labour market system. Trust ties were enhanced by consistency between the key players, routinized engagement, reliability, honesty, respect, capacity and willingness to engage, and transparency. Although shared objectives made engagement easier, they were not a prerequisite for a positive relationship. Bilateral relationships that took place within the geographic boundaries of Alberta and Scotland were considered as positive and highly workable. Difficulties arose when relationships became multilateral or bilateral relations were managed at a distance. Despite devolution, multilateral relations in the historically conflicted labour market policy domain in Canada remained competitive, with a low degree of workability. Relationships with respect to disability and immigration issues were more positive. In the UK relationships in the welfare to work policy area were cooperative and highly workable. Relationships in skills and immigration did not fare as positively

Institutional Moral Hazard in the Multi-tiered Regulation of Unemployment and Social Assistance Benefits. CEPS Special Report No. 137/April 2016 Wednesday, 27 April 2016

This paper studies eight countries in which the regulation of unemployment benefits and related benefits and the concomitant activation of unemployed individuals has a multi-tiered architecture. It assesses their experiences and tries to understand possible problems of ‘institutional moral hazard’ that may emerge in the context of a hypothetical European Unemployment Benefit Scheme

A Study of Video-Mediated Opportunities for Self-Directed Learning in Required Core Curriculum

Improving a required course in our curriculum that has proven to be a challenge for our students was the focus of this study. Surveys of both students and instructors attempted to identify specific problem areas. Using the information from these surveys, the researchers developed a series of videos to explain vital course concepts and deployed these into the course sections. The purpose of the videos is to provide consistency across the multiple modalities in which we offer our courses (including online, classroom and via videoconferencing) and to improve overall student understanding. This project seeks to determine how supplemental content focusing on material identified as “difficult,” by students and instructors, can impact student performance. Challenges include the deployment of the videos across various modalities and obtaining sufficient student feedback

A Comparison of Online, Video Synchronous, and Traditional Learning Modes for an Introductory Undergraduate Physics Course

While the equivalence between online and traditional classrooms has been well-researched, very little of this includes college-level introductory Physics. Only one study explored Physics at the whole-class level rather than specific course components such as a single lab or a homework platform. In this work, we compared the failure rate, grade distribution, and withdrawal rates in an introductory undergraduate Physics course across several learning modes including traditional face-to-face instruction, synchronous video instruction, and online classes. Statistically significant differences were found for student failure rates,grade distribution, and withdrawal rates but yielded small effect sizes. Post-hoc pair-wise test was run to determine differences between learning modes. Online students had a significantly lower failure rate than students who took the class via synchronous video classroom. While statistically significant differences were found for grade distributions, the pair-wise comparison yielded no statistically significance differences between learning modes when using the more conservative Bonferroni correction in post-hoc testing. Finally, in this study, student withdrawal rates were lowest for students who took the class in person (in-person classroom and synchronous video classroom) than online. Students that persist in an online introductory Physics class are more likely to achieve an A than in other modes. However, the withdrawal rate is higher from online Physics courses. Further research is warranted to better understand the reasons for higher withdrawal rates in online courses. Finding the root cause to help eliminate differences in student performance across learning modes should remain a high priority for education researchers and the education community as a whole