Search results

Organizational leaders value effective communication in employees, but ineffective communication persists (Peart, 2019). Communication Skills Training (CST) programs often face time and engagement constraints (Wright et al., 2006), necessitating increased resources for improvement. This study investigates the fields in which communication skills are examined and the research methods used. Given past training-communication associations, it explores CST programs' positive impact through experimental research (Bakker & van Wingerden, 2021). The study aims to enhance CST research by providing insights into effective training methods for facilitators and practitioners.

This systematic literature review examines CST's effectiveness in improving employee communication outcomes and identifying key factors. It highlights the importance of communication training, provides insights into existing research, and identifies areas for future investigation. As communication training is not context-specific, a comprehensive understanding of its effectiveness is necessary. This review establishes a foundational framework to support the creation of impactful training programs.

This research reaffirms the importance of Communication Skills Training (CST) in enhancing key competencies such as communication competence, self-efficacy, and empathy for workplace success, benefiting collaboration, conflict resolution, and problem-solving. It provides a foundational understanding of CST's impact, serving as a resource for researchers, trainers, and leaders, while also emphasizing the need for further research, including larger experiments, diverse skill sets, and long-term assessment. In our digital age, exploring contemporary skills, including digital communication, is essential for comprehensive training. The systematic categorization of skills into intrapersonal and interactional dimensions ensures consistency and supports in-depth analysis.

To address the broad range, outcome skills were categorized as intrapersonal or interactional, excluding the behavioral aspect concerning societal improvement. Leveraging Zimmerman's (1995) empowerment theory to enhance focus, this framework provides value for diverse CST research outcomes. Intrapersonal encompassed self-views, like self-efficacy and knowledge, while interactional involved understanding and aligning exchanges with personal goals. This categorization enhances research clarity and effectiveness by systematically understanding how these skills are related.

Naming practices reflect culture, language and identity considerations. This study aims to explore Chinese American naming choices, revealing nuanced and complex linguistic, cultural and pragmatic considerations for teachers of literacy.

The authors interviewed Chinese parents who are now living with their school-aged children in the USA on the naming choices of their students. By using content analysis, this study found patterns and themes from the interview data.

The findings of this study suggest Chinese parents named their US school-aged children by taking into consideration of both Mandarin and English linguistic features, traditional and pop culture and the transnational identity of their children.

The findings of this study can help teachers and teacher educators better understand the naming traditions of Chinese American families and connect these traditions to literacy instruction in the classroom. This study proposes practical suggestions suitable for both monolingual and multilingual students to explore all children’s names and help build inclusive, culturally sustaining classrooms.

Purpose: Process innovations are becoming increasingly significant in a changing digital society. The goal of this study is to focus on the service industry, particularly on how this sector has lately been influenced by sustainable development and digitalisation. The main focus will be on education. The cohabitation of three aspects (innovation, digitalisation, and sustainability) is declared as a fact in the competitive landscape.

Methodology: This study uses a multi-case approach emphasising the new system of processes in educational institutions in Canada, Ontario. These case studies are relevant to exceptional results consistently produced by various educational institutions.

Findings: The Waterloo region is known as a digitalisation triangle in Canada. Personal experiences and research findings serve as an example of the value of the global digitalised economy as a partnership principle in the educational and entrepreneurship fields.

Significance: The obtained experience and the attempt to share the knowledge and results of this work and research will be useful in future for other academic environments, cities, and countries.

Practical Implications: Cohesion between the purpose of this study and practice is explained as a need to see educational institutions as an important factor of innovation and economic development. In this case, the author shows how this successful case of Ontario, Canada created a stronger base for competitiveness and economic growth.

This study aims to explore the competencies needed by performance consultants, a particular role identified for training and development professionals. The role was formally named and promoted nearly two decades ago. Two ongoing discussions in the field are the competencies needed by training and development professionals and the role of consulting within the field.

This study identifies the general competencies needed by a performance consultant as reflected in job descriptions for the position. It accomplished this goal by collecting job descriptions for the position from organizations in Canada (the result of a practical arrangement with an organization that would collect the descriptions and remove identifying information before the research team analyzed them), systematically analyzing them using qualitative content analysis techniques and generating a profile of the position, which can be used as a basis for further analysis of the position.

The job title and competencies sought in the job descriptions differ from those proposed in the literature. Specific areas of difference include the title (none of the job descriptions analyzed explicitly used the title performance consultant), role in needs analysis and client relationships, technology competence (the job descriptions sought little, if any, while the literature suggests broad conceptual knowledge) and qualifications (most job descriptions only require a bachelor’s degree; many training and development professionals have more education).

The profile presented in this paper only represents that used in job descriptions (typically an idealized version) and in a particular national context. But if the results are validated with other methodologies and in other contexts, they suggest that the actual consulting role significantly differs from the one conceptualized in the literature.

The findings suggest that the consultant role conceived in the literature differs from the actual job expected by employers, at least as reflected in job descriptions. Research with incumbents in the job is needed to assess whether the inconsistencies are also reflected in the day-to-day work.

Social implications validate the broad concern that trainers have skills and talents to offer organizations that those organizations do not fully utilize.

The paper provides one of the few empirical studies of the job responsibilities of a performance consultant.